


Ruin

by leitmotifs (orphan_account)



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Love Triangles, M/M, Post Apocalyptic AU, Slow Build, because zombies, general OT5 relationship, mild gore and violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-29
Updated: 2014-01-02
Packaged: 2017-12-21 18:24:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 32,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/903423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/leitmotifs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set in a post-apocalyptic AU: Harry, Louis, Liam, and Zayn have done well enough on their own, but things change when they find a boy named Niall. </p><p>Niall certainly isn't the type of person that Harry would normally like, but it happens anyway, despite that Zayn seems to like Niall just as much, and despite that there should be no time for something as silly as love. Oh, and that bite mark on Niall's arm is probably going to be a problem, too. </p><p>Things are only going to get messier.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. i. - iii.

**Author's Note:**

> this is also on [Wattpad](http://www.wattpad.com/story/7219125-ruin-narry-ziall) and [tumblr](http://justlogorrheic.tumblr.com/post/56723168534/ruin-narry-ziall-1)!
> 
> this is inspired by Last of Us and L4D2 and Zombieland and World War Z and maybe Warm Bodies. it's just a lot of zombie games/movies in general, ok.
> 
> also, as the pairings indicate, this'll be Harry/Niall/Zayn, and i have a faint idea of how it's going to end, but i'm really going to have fun with this love triangle, heh...
> 
> anyways, i hope you guys like it~

i.

“The world’s gone to shit, hasn’t it,” Liam sighs as he kicks at a pile of rubble. Pebbles go flying. Beside him, Harry snorts.

“How long did it take you to figure that one?” Louis asks rhetorically, and Harry hushes them warningly. They have to keep their voices down so they don’t wake Zayn, who’s already been asleep for the past ten minutes.

They’re filthy, all of them. Bloody, too. Harry can’t recall the last time he’s had a nice, hot shower, and just thinking about it makes him slump down next to Zayn, a wistful sigh escaping his mouth.

“Jesus Christ, if anyone sighs one more time,” Louis grumbles, slinging his rifle over his shoulder. “I’m going to go check the back, see if there’s anything we can use.”

“We’re in a toy store, Lou,” Harry calls, and he’s rewarded with a “Fuck you” as Louis disappears through the back.

In video games, you had no trouble finding supplies: shotgun shells were always glinting surreptitiously in little nooks and molotovs were always sitting ready on counters. Zombies paused deliberately before they lunged at you. But this isn’t a game, a fact that Harry has to frequently remind himself of – not that their desolate surroundings weren’t enough of a reminder.

“It was a rough day. He’s just on edge,” Liam murmurs, as if to offer some comfort. Harry grunts, makes space so the other boy can sit. Zayn sleeps on, and for a while, the only sounds are soft snoring and the occasional rustles in the back.

“We all are.” Harry looks down at his handgun. It isn’t as impressive as Louis’s rifle or Zayn’s crossbow, but it’s saved his life more times than he can count. He sets it on the floor and flexes his fingers, wincing when they throb dully.

They’re surrounded by toys, mostly teddy bears with bright fur. Zayn’s using one as a pillow, and it would be funny if his leg wasn’t covered in blood-soaked bandages.

“We’re going to be all right.” Liam’s always trying to keep positive, but he now sounds a little unsure. “We’ve survived for this long. We can make it through tonight.”

Harry knows that Liam keeps count by making little notches on the handle of his axe. He nods listlessly, only half listening.

“Go to sleep,” Liam tells him gently. “Louis and I’ll take first watch. We’ll wake you when it’s your turn.”

“Yeah.” Harry nods again. He feels tired all the time, but now the fatigue seems exceptionally worse. “Yeah, that sounds good.”

Liam stands. There’s only a little bit of sunlight left, streaming in through the cracks of the boarded windows, but Harry can see the tension in Liam’s jaw, the slight furrow of his brow. He’s grateful that they have someone who keeps a level head, because if it weren’t for Liam, they would have all gone insane by now.

“Thanks, Li,” Harry says through a yawn, and he really hopes that the older boy knows he’s grateful.

Liam only cracks a smile and tosses him a teddy bear on his way out.

 

 

ii.

This is what he dreams of: Zayn standing on the roof of a car, Liam shouting behind them; the fire in the distance; the shout that had left his mouth when he saw the hand shoot up and grab Zayn by the ankle, and it was too late because Zayn was getting dragged off–

Harry wakes up in a cold sweat, breathing erratic and heart trying to pound its way out of his chest. He fumbles around until his fingers land on someone’s arm. With the sun gone, he has to take out his pocket light to confirm that Zayn is indeed still next to him.

Flicking the switch off, Harry leans back against the counter, telling his heart to calm down. He hears hushed voices in the back and takes comfort in that.

They’re still together, he tells himself. There’s no guaranteeing how the next day would go, but for now, they’re _safe_ , and that’s what matters.

He tries to go back to sleep, but he can’t, and- And he _hates_ when he can’t sleep, because his mind has nothing else to do and the memories come back, and he sees his family and his other friends, his _home_.

 

 

iii.

“Harry? Wake up.”

There’s a hand shaking his shoulder and Harry doesn’t actually wake up; he hasn’t slept since the nightmare.

“Harry? Are you okay?” He blinks and realizes that it’s Louis standing above him, looking considerably less angry than he did hours ago.

“M’fine,” Harry mumbles, perhaps not convincingly enough because then Louis’s hand is on his forehead.

“You feel cold.”

“I said I’m fine, Lou.” He stands, nudging Louis’s arm away. “My turn?”

“Yeah. I found a ladder in the back that leads to the roof and it’s all clear up there. We figured that tomorrow, if those things haven’t stopped crowding in the front, we could go down the fire escape.”

“Thank god. Didn’t think I could last long in here, these dolls are creepy,” Harry says with a small, breathy chuckle, and Louis laughs back.

It’s been a while since he heard a laugh.

“And,” Louis adds, “I’m sorry for earlier. I was… There was just a lot of blood, you know? And Zayn- he was-“

“No, no, I get it. It’s okay. I was scared too.” Harry gives him a small smile. He tells him the same thing he’s been telling himself: “But we’re good for now, yeah? And tomorrow we could probably leave, find a car, and drive to that safe zone and we’re going to be all right, Lou.”

“Liam’s optimism is rubbing off on you,” Louis points out.

“My what’s rubbing off on who?” chimes a third voice, and then Liam appears from the back. “Am I interrupting something?”

“No, by all means, we’re not stopping you from cuddling up to Zayn-“

“Oh, _sod off_.”

Harry tries to hold in his laughter and ends up snorting, which sends Louis’s calm façade breaking, and then they’re both laughing and Liam’s even smiling a little too.

“What’s happening?” Unsurprisingly, they’ve woken Zayn.

“We were in the way of Liam getting his cuddles,” Louis cackles, and Liam actually whines, and Zayn starts laughing, and Harry can’t help it, he spirals into another bout of giggles.

It feels ridiculously good to laugh. He’s going through the End Of The World As They Know It, but he’s also with his three best friends and that makes the situation suck a little less.

“Don’t make me remind you–“ Before Liam can finish his threat, they hear a crash.

Zayn is up in an instant, gripping his crossbow, and Harry wants to tell him to sit back down, he’s in no condition to do anything, but the dark-haired boy simply moves past them.

“How big is the back?” he whispers.

“It’s a small storeroom, and there’s a ladder that leads up to the roof,” Louis replies, all traces of laughter gone. “But we checked earlier and there was no one up there.”

Harry flicks on his pocket light, and with Zayn leading, they move to the back. Harry doesn’t fail to notice the small limp in his step, and he really wishes he could tell Zayn to go back – but if anyone has the best chance at killing something silently, then it’s Zayn. No one else knows how to work that fucking crossbow.

Zayn climbs the ladder, and Liam makes some noise of protest.

“Follow him up, Harry,” Louis is whispering, and Harry was planning to, anyway. Once Zayn is up, Harry climbs up after him.

“Make sure the front’s secure,” he tells Louis and Liam, because they’ve barricaded the entrance with shelves, but the undead were full of surprises.

“Harry. C’mere.”

There are boxes everywhere, probably filled with toys that were never unpacked. Harry nudges one with his foot. “Think something’s hiding out here?” he asks lowly, turning to the other boy.

Zayn gestures with his crossbow. Harry follows his line of sight, and he’s just in time to see a few boxes moving.

“You don’t have to waste a shot. We could just shove these boxes over, I reckon that the fall would kill it–“

“No, wait!”

The voice doesn’t even register – it’s the sudden movement that sends boxes flying, and in the moon’s dim lighting, Harry catches a glimpse of two… _arms?_ but Zayn is already on it, already raising his crossbow higher and then there’s a _whoosh_ as the arrow slices through the air.

It lands embedded in a box.

Harry’s already moving, clenching his knife so tightly that his knuckles are white. Three steps forward, he freezes.

There’s a boy, and he doesn’t look- he doesn’t look like one of _them_.

“I’m going to move, okay, but I’ve got no weapons or anything, so you’d just waste an arrow by killing me,” the… _thing_ says.

Harry stares, dumbfounded, as the boy – skinny and blond and wearing a jacket and looking like he’s been through hell and back – lowers his arms.

Daring to glance back, Harry realizes that Zayn looks just as stunned as he is.

“Well,” the boy speaks again, and Harry turns quickly. “You got the bears pretty good.” There’s a click as Zayn reloads his crossbow, but either the boy doesn’t notice, or he’s actually ignoring them. It’s most likely the latter, Harry thinks as he watches the boy open the box. Indeed, there’s fluff everywhere and the stuffed bears are absolutely mangled.

“Get him, Harry,” Zayn says, so quietly that Harry almost misses it.

“But-“

“ _Harry_.”

He moves without thinking, taking long strides to the newcomer on the other side of the roof. “Do you want your arrow back?” the boy asks, and Harry thinks a small _Sorry_ , _kid_ , before he yanks him up by the arm.

“I can stand, thanks, you didn’t have to– Ow, mother _fucker_ , you don’t have to drag me, I can walk too–“

Zayn doesn’t bother using the ladder on his way back in, and Harry practically pushes the boy down too. He follows, and then the three of them are inside the storeroom again.

“There’s a whole lot more in the front. I think the sound-“

Liam freezes in the doorway. In the background, Harry can hear thumping, accompanied by the familiar, sluggish groans.

“How many of you _are_ there?” the boy, not bothering to get back from where he’d landed on the floor, says in wonder.

Harry wants to tell him shut up, but he also wants to kneel down and ask if he’s hurt.

He ends up doing neither.

“Is he infected?” Liam practically bites out, and Harry could _feel_ the anxiety rolling off him.

Zayn nudges the boy with a foot. “No!” the blond answers with a quick shake of his head.

“Then we’ll talk later, but right now there’s a horde about to come through the front, and I need you and Zayn up there,” Liam jerks a finger at Harry, then at the stranger, “and _you_ , don’t you dare try anything, or I’ll put this axe through your head _myself_ –“

“Liam!” Louis shouts from the other room, and then Liam’s gone.

“Is your leg okay?” Harry turns to Zayn.

“It’s fine enough,” is the response, and Harry can’t be bothered to argue, not when they’re rushing out to meet Liam and Louis.

“The shelf isn’t going to hold!”

On cue, it falls, and Louis barely manages to move away before he’s crushed.

“No good, no good,” he yelps, leaping over the counter. “Everyone, up on the roof, _now_!”

It’s just like the previous afternoon all over again, Harry thinks, except no one’s been grabbed yet, and he hopes that it doesn’t come to that. He shoves Zayn towards the ladder and opts to stay by the doorway, pushing Louis as he comes through. “Liam, come on!” Harry hears someone shriek, and he realizes it came from _him_.

There’s a loud crash as the doors finally give. Liam finally comes close enough that Harry can yank him by the shirt and shove him forward.

The first infected stumbles into the store, only to be surpassed by three more and – _oh, shit, those are definitely fast ones–_

Harry goes into autopilot and grabs the kid – who had pressed himself to the corner with the most terrified expression Harry’s ever seen – and practically throws him to the ladder.

He barely makes it himself – he feels a hand close around his ankle just as he reaches the top, and he would’ve been pulled down if someone hadn’t grabbed his hand and pulled him up the rest of the way.

“They can’t climb,” he hears someone muttering, “they can’t climb, they can’t climb, we’re going to be okay,” and Harry blinks, realizing that he’s not getting torn to pieces. He’s landed on his back, with his savior curled above him, and judging by the blond tufts of hair, it’s not Liam, Louis, or Zayn.

 _He’s shaking_ , Harry thinks, feeling the tremors coming from the other boy. Which is strange, considering he wasn’t the one who was almost eaten.

“Harry?” Liam says with a warning edge to his tone.

Harry holds up a finger, as if to say _Hold on, I’ve got this_. He puts a hand on the kid’s back and slowly tries to push them into a sitting position. “I’m glad I’m alive, too,” he murmurs, “but do you think you could get off me now?”

The boy moves back, and a pair of (startlingly) blue eyes stare at him. “Okay, yeah,” the boy mutters, looking embarrassed. He moves off. “Sorry. I get like that, and… Yeah. Sorry.”

“ _Harry_.” This time it’s Louis, and that’s when Harry notices that his friends are very far away from them, and that Zayn is wielding his crossbow again, aiming at _him_ -

“Get away from him,” Zayn orders.

-no, no, he’s aiming at the other boy.

Harry stands and notices another thing: in the scuffle, the boy had lost his jacket.

Also, there is a rather sizeable bite mark on his upper arm.

“So, I’m Niall,” the boy speaks casually, almost _brightly_ , and Harry recoils in horror. “I don’t think I caught any of your names…?”


	2. iv. - xii.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> omg thank you guys for all the feedback so far!! i'm really glad i'm not the only one who appreciates zombie AUs, haha.
> 
> and i swear, this is going get lighter. pinky promise.

iv.

Maybe it’s the wrong time to notice, but Harry takes note of the accent that tints Niall’s voice. It’s quite heavy and…Irish, perhaps. It definitely isn’t British.

“What’s the matter?” Niall’s eyebrows furrow downwards, a look of confusion etched onto his face. “You all look like you’ve just seen a ghost… Er, well, we did almost get eaten by zombies, so I s’pose I can’t blame you…”

Harry wants to turn around to check if anyone else is in as much disbelief as he is. Because, well. This is all very strange.

“Zayn,” someone says, maybe Liam. “Zayn, shoot it.”

“It?”

Hurt actually flickers through Niall’s eyes, and Harry has this urge to apologise on behalf of his friends. Niall might have been bitten, but that didn’t change the fact that he was still a boy – and currently a very vulnerable looking one.

Harry watches Niall’s gaze lower, and then realization blooms across his features. “Oh–“ the blond curses, as if just noticing his bare arms. He puts a hand over the mark, curling in on himself a little. “That’s– It’s honestly not what it looks like, and I’d appreciate if you didn’t shoot me so I could explain.”

Those blue eyes turn on Harry, and Harry swallows. They are almost pleading. “You believe me, right? I’m not one of those things.”

“But you will be!” Louis snaps. “Zayn, what the hell are you waiting for?”

Harry hears a click, and he moves instinctively, stepping in front of the boy and blocking Zayn’s sights.

“Harry,” Zayn says levelly, “move.”

“He saved me, all right? The least we can do is hear him out.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes,” Harry answers firmly. “And if he’s bullshitting or if he tries to eat us halfway through, then feel free to stick him in the eye. But right now, we’ve got nowhere to go and nothing to lose.”

“Except maybe a few fingers,” he hears Louis mutter off-handedly.

Harry ignores it and turns to Niall. “You hear me?” he warns.

Niall does the most confusing thing, _ever_ : he smiles up at Harry. “Loud and clear. Hey, do you happen to have some food? I’m kinda starving.”

 

v.

No, they don’t give him food, mostly because they still weren’t sure whether Niall is actually human or not. Niall looks disappointed, but complies when Liam tells him to sit down.

It still must be three in the morning or something, but from what Harry can tell, none of them want to be sleeping. They’re all studying the boy sitting across them.

“Could you guys stop looking at me like that?” Niall asks, his voice small. He still has a hand over his mark, and his shoulders are hunched, and he looks even smaller.

Liam starts asking questions, but Harry he finds himself more occupied with the sight of Niall.

There’s nothing about him that screams _I’m a zombie!_ except for the mark, and even that seems to be… _healed_ a little. His skin doesn’t have the same gray pallor like the undead do. His eyes are blue and clear and devoid of mania, and Harry can tell that his pupils aren’t blown wide. His hair doesn’t look like it’s been decaying for weeks. His teeth don’t seem too awful, either.

“I was a block away from here, I think.” Niall points somewhere south. “A bakery. I wanted to see if there was anything left that I could take, you know. But the next thing I knew, I was hearing gunshots, so I looked outside, and I saw you running down the street. One of you was limping.”

Zayn shifts, pulling his bandaged leg back a little.

“I was going to go out and see if I could help, but you were being chased by a massive amount of zombies, and I’d already blocked the door with a pile of chairs. I saw you go into the store, and then that was it. I was thinking that maybe you’d died after all, but I wanted to check anyway – you’re the first humans I’ve seen since things went to hell, so I was curious, all right? I had to wait until those things finally wandered off, and then I sneaked out and tried the door, but it was locked. Or barricaded.”

“So how did you get up here?” Liam gestures around them.

“The fire escape,” Louis says faintly.

Niall nods. “Yep, I climbed that thing. But it must’ve been really old and rusty, because…um…” He clears his throat. “Half of it may or may not have fallen off.”

Harry feels his heart sink. “Wait, what?”

“I don’t know, okay!” Niall throws his arms up into the air, and the sudden movement has Zayn aiming his crossbow again. After getting assured that Niall intended no harm (“Sorry, sorry! I’m not about to lunge at you or anything!”), Zayn let him continue. “Some screws must’ve come loose? It just dropped.”

So _that_ was where the noise came from.

Apparently, Liam has arrived to the same conclusion. “So you’re the one who attracted them here,” he says under his breath, not bothering to hide his displeasure. Then, louder: “What did you think would happen when you found us?”

“Well, there’s strength in numbers and all that…”

“You thought we’d take you in?”

Niall shrinks at the sharpness of Liam’s voice.

“You’re bitten.”

“I‘ve _been_ bitten,” Niall says, his voice cracking a little, “for the past three weeks. And– don’t start giving me shit about how that doesn’t make sense, because I don’t know _how_ , either.”

“So what do you want us to do?” Harry interrupts, because Liam looks ready to grab the crossbow from Zayn and shoot Niall himself.

“I don’t know. Not shoot me?”

Harry doesn’t know what possesses him to take off his jacket. Maybe it’s the way Niall looks and sounds so… _miserable_ that dredges pity from Harry’s chest. He throws it at Niall, who barely catches it.

“We need to talk things over.” Harry nods to his friends, indicating that “we” means everyone except Niall. “Put that on, in case that bite’s contagious.”

“’m not contagious,” he hears Niall mumble sourly.

Satisfied, Harry stands and gestures for the other guys to follow him. They had a lot to talk about.

 

vi.

Niall wishes that he could at least retreat back inside, but those zombies have made sure that he had no choice other than to sit there as his fate is decided a few feet away.

His stomach growls, and yeah, he wasn’t kidding when he said he was starving. Niall’s fingers curl into the fabric of the jacket he’s been given, frustration bubbling in the pit of his stomach. He doesn’t understand why these guys are acting like such assholes; sure, he probably should have waited to reveal the bite, but they should be giving him a little more credit! Niall knows for a fact that he looks nothing like a zombie (he’s checked hundreds of times). Plus, calling him an “it” had just been plain rude.

More than anything, he’s starting to regret finding these boys. Greg had always told him that groups bettered their chances of survival, but look where that advice had landed him: on a rooftop with his potential four murderers, including one who had already nearly shot an arrow into his crotch.

Niall huffs, shifting his attention to that boy in particular. He vaguely remembers one of them calling him Zayn. He seems the most different out of the group, with his dark hair and black leather jacket and– blood?

“What happened to his leg?” Niall asks, loudly enough that it disrupts the group’s whispering. As soon as he realizes he’d spoken, he has to resist the urge to slap a hand over his mouth. “I mean, I know what bandages look like when they need to be changed, and those look way overdue.”

The group shares contemplative glances.

“And what can you do about it?” Zayn drawls.

Niall’s face brightens, and he waves a hand in the direction of some boxes. “I have bandages! They’re in my backpack, which is still back there, since I didn’t really have time to pick it up when you dragged me away.”

Apparently ignoring the passive aggressive snark, the boy with curly hair walks over and discovers that there is indeed a backpack. “This is yours?” he asks, returning with the backpack. He turns it. Ariel’s face is plastered on the front.

Niall ducks his head sheepishly. “That’s it,” he confirms.

“So you’re a fan of Little Mermaid?” the boy says thoughtfully, and one of his friends elbows him in the side, griping about something like “fraternizing with the enemy.”

“I got it while looting a department store, okay.” Niall groans. “It was either that or a pillow case– Hey! Be careful with that!”

“Anything, Harry?” The one with the axe looks over the curly-haired boy’s shoulder.

“Got ‘em.” Harry finally ceases his ransacking – to Niall’s relief – and holds up the aforementioned roll of bandages. “Here you go, Z.”

Niall watches them with a close eye.

 

vii.

Actually, he _continues_ to watch them with a close eye up until they’ve decided they won’t shoot him, they’ve changed Zayn’s bandages, and they’ve had another little group meeting about what to do next.

(“We go down what’s left of the ladder, then jump the rest of the way,” the one named Harry said wisely.

“Zayn’s not in any condition to jump,” the shorter, blue-eyed boy next to him argued.

“I’m not some kind of cripple,” Zayn cut in, looking less than amused.

“We wait until morning, then,” the one they called Liam said. He seemed to be the unofficial pacifier of the group. “God knows I haven’t gotten enough sleep.”)

Niall wonders if some of them are related, possibly.

Then again, siblings don’t give each other _those_ kinds of looks–

 

viii.

“Thanks for the bandages, by the way,” Zayn says, surprising Niall.

He looks up at the darker haired boy. “It was the least I could do,” Niall says sweetly, “after you, you know, almost shot me in the crotch.”

Zayn shifts, coming to sit next to him. Niall’s a little bit taken aback by this, but he scoots over and makes room for him, anyway. He looks out at the rest of the boys. Two of them seem to be using each other as pillows. The third one – Harry, Niall thinks – is off to the side, surrounded by teddy bears.

Zayn had volunteered himself to watch over Niall, and after some disagreement with the others, they finally relented, partly because fatigue was a bitch. “Wake me up if you wanna switch, Z,” Harry had said, voice laced with sleep, but two seconds later, he was out like a light.

Niall had expected the next two hours to crawl by in awkward silence, but apparently that wouldn’t be the case.

“Yeah, sorry about that.” Zayn does actually sound apologetic. Hm. “You moved, and– it’s just instinct by now.”

Niall slowly nods, unsure of what else to say. He’s fine with letting the conversation die and waste more time staring at the city below them, but soon enough, Zayn’s talking again.

“That’s Harry,” he says, pointing to the one with the teddy bears. “The one that’s practically cuddling his axe is Liam, and the one next to him is Louis. I’m Zayn.”

“Cool. Uh, is this…like, a last meal sort of deal?”

“What does that even mean?”

“I read somewhere that before prisoners are executed, they get to have whatever they want for their last meal. Are you being nice to me so you don’t have to feel bad when you guys push me into that zombie pit in the morning?”

“Didn’t you hear us? We said we wouldn’t do that.” Zayn quirks a smile, setting his crossbow down.

“I could turn,” Niall reminds him, maybe a little threateningly. He makes clawing motions and bares his teeth. “Could eat you all.”

“Don’t start with Liam. You’d get a stomachache.”

“Hm, thanks for the advice, but I don’t think I’d remember that.”

“I’ll steer you away from him.”

“Gee, that’s awfully nice of you. Thanks.” Niall looks at him suspiciously. “But seriously, what is…” he makes vague flapping motions around them, “…this?”

“You’re the first…human we’ve seen in a while. Those three are my best friends, but I was starting to go a little crazy from seeing just them.”

“I guess that’s understandable.”

“You _are_ human, right?” Zayn turns to him, frowning.

Consciously, Niall draws Harry’s jacket tighter around him, as if it would stop Zayn from looking at his arm. “Yeah,” he says, a little distantly. “I’m pretty sure I am.”

“So that’s fake, right? That’s what I told them. I used to work as a tattoo artist, and I said that it just looked like a really convincing drawing.”

Oh.

Niall looks down at his fingers. He has a chance here, he knows: he could take the way out that Zayn had just blatantly provided for him, or do the honorable thing and tell the truth.

Fuck.

“It’s…” he starts weakly.

Zayn nods once, not quite looking at him. “Yeah, I figured.” He sighs, leaning back and pulling his knees in. Their legs accidentally knock together, and Niall feels that Zayn is being too trusting for his own good.

(But he’s thankful for that. He’s really, really thankful.)

 

ix.

“How’d it happen?”

Niall’s halfway to dreamland. “Huh?”

“The bite.”

He pauses. Thinks. Answers, in hopes that Zayn understands, “Don’t want to talk about it.”

“Okay. Sorry.”

“S’fine.”

“But if you do turn.”

Niall glances up at him.

“I’m gonna have to…you know.”

“I… Yeah, I know. Don’t let me eat your best friends’ brains.”

Zayn cracks a smile. “Thanks, Niall.”

Niall maybe, maybe grins back at him. He’s not sure what he’s being thanked for, but he says, “No problem.”

 

x.

“Rise and shine!”

Harry groans, throwing a teddy bear blindly. Judging from Louis’s indignant “Oi!” he hit his mark.

He drags himself up to a sitting position, blinking wearily against the harsh sunlight. They’re in the beginnings of autumn, but it sure doesn’t feel like it. “Good morning,” he grumbles, even though it doesn’t really feel like a good morning.

Liam is peering into the store and Louis is behind him, making exaggerated motions about pushing him over. Zayn is checking over his bandages and Niall is nowhere to be seen.

…Niall is nowhere to be seen?

“Where’s Blondie?” Harry asks, squinting. The nickname just kind of slips out.

“He’s over here.” Zayn jerks a thumb over his shoulders, indicating to someplace obscured by boxes. “I let him sleep.”

“Oh, okay.” Harry thinks nothing of it.

 

xi.

They eat “breakfast,” which is basically a granola bar for each of them and then a bottle of water that they pass around.

Zayn breaks his in half and shares it with Niall, who appears positively delighted.

Now – Harry thinks something of _that_.

 _What the hell happened last night?_ he thinks, definitely not petulantly.

 

xii.

“Nothing.” Zayn gives him A Look.

Harry stares at him, then at the blond boy a few feet away, then back at him again. “Just…be careful, okay?” He doesn’t even know what he’s telling Zayn to be careful _of_ , but. They’re friends. He has to do that, has to think of the worse before it actually happens.

He’s also not entirely convinced that Niall has a tattoo.

“Aw, you’re worried about me.” Zayn smirks that infuriating smirk of his.

Harry sniffs and crosses his arms overdramatically. “I take all that back. I hope you rot.”

“Love you too, Hazza.” Zayn claps him on the back, still smirking.

“Hate to break up your little lovefest, but do you think you two could help over here?” Louis waves them over to the side of the roof, presumably where the ladder is.

Niall’s standing awkwardly to the side, and Harry contemplates saying something, but Zayn beats him to it. Actually, Zayn doesn’t say anything – Harry sees them exchange glances, and then Niall is smiling gratefully, walking over to them.

Harry refuses to dwell on it. He trusts Zayn not to do anything stupid, and Niall – well, Niall…

“You’re Harry, right?”

…is currently talking to him.

Harry tilts his head. “That’s me.” He has this overwhelming urge to ask if Niall is Irish, but maybe it’s an inappropriate time. Later, he thinks.

“You can have your jacket back.” Niall offers him the thing. He’s holding that ridiculous Little Mermaid backpack in his other hand.

Harry makes a decision, maybe a little irrationally but hey, they’re in the middle of a zombie apocalypse and he Might As Well. “Fall’s coming, and I reckon it’s gonna get colder. Keep it.”


	3. xiii. - xxiv.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOW I'M REALLY GLAD THAT PEOPLE ARE ACTUALLY LIKING THIS STORY  
> seriously, thanks so much for the positive feedback, guys! you've no idea how much it means to me. ;A;

xiii.

“So where are you lot headed?” Niall says, peering over the side of the roof. A few infected are still lumbering around the alleyway, and he hopes they wander off somewhere else soon. They can’t stay on this roof forever.

“Safe zone,” Harry answers. “We heard their radio broadcasts a few weeks ago, and we’ve been trying to get there ever since. Just a town over now, I think.”

Niall frowns, because the mention of the radio broadcast is eerily familiar. Surely they aren’t–? “Radio broadcast?” He tries to sound as casual as possible.

“You haven’t heard it? They talked about how they had food, shelter, and safety. Apparently they’re working on a cure, too.”

“A cure,” Niall repeats absently, scratching at his arm. Thinks: _They weren’t so interested in a cure when I was there._

 

xiv.

“All right, you first, Blondie.”

Liam smothers a laugh with the back of his hand. Harry says it so nonchalantly, but Niall looks rather scandalized.

“My name’s _Niall_. And I thought Liam was going to go first.”

The alley is empty now. There are two loitering by the opening, but they look like one of the slower ones, and Liam figures he can take them on.

“Be quiet before you get their attention,” he warns, waving a hand in the general direction of Harry and Niall. Crouching by the edge, Liam pauses for a second before dropping his axe. He hears it hit the floor with a dull thud and glances over to the undead. They haven’t noticed.

“Sort out who’s going first, and do it quickly.” He adds the last part because he doesn’t want to be stuck down there by himself while an argument ensues on the roof. Honestly.

“Yes, mom.” Harry adopts a mocking, high-pitched voice.

Liam flips him off before starting down the ladder.

“Doing good, Li,” Louis whispers down helpfully. They’ve done this before – not the getting-stuck-on-the-roof thing, but the thing where one of them looks out for the other.

Eventually, there are no more rungs left for him to descend. Liam spares a glance below him, gauging the distance, and then he lets go.

He lands hard on his feet a few feet from where the axe dropped, teetering forward and nearly running crashing into the brick wall. Thankfully, that doesn’t happen.

Liam cranes his neck upwards, trying to catch a glimpse of the other boys. He motions for one of them to start moving _now_ , but he ends up having to wait a few minutes. “For fuck’s sake, can’t you argue when we’re _not_ in danger of being eaten?” he maybe wants to screech up at them, but that would mean attracting the zombies. So he resorts to yelling it in his head and cursing out everyone.

Finally, he sees someone’s legs start down on the ladder. “About time,” Liam says under his breath, taking a few steps forward. He doesn’t pick up his axe yet, lest he accidentally lobs someone’s arm off.

Niall peeks down at him. He’s at where the ladder ends. “Um, Liam?”

“It’s okay.” Liam identifies the scared tone immediately. He used to see it all the time with Louis and Harry and Zayn, when things were just first starting – he says the same thing he used to say to them: “It’s okay, I’ve got you.”

But maybe Niall’s a little bit different from the others, because his eyes only go wider and he squeaks, “What are you going to do, ca–“

A sickening creak interrupts him.

Something hits Liam’s forehead. The object tumbles to the ground and– it’s a screw.

The ladder creaks again, there are shouts from the other guys, and Niall’s chanting something vaguely like _OhshitfuckfuckfuckfuckhelpmeLiamhelpmehelp–_

Liam really has no other choice.

 

xv.

“The ladder fell,” Niall mumbles unnecessarily against steel.

Yeah, and Liam feels like he’s just been bulldozed by a sumo wrestler.

“Get off,” he gasps.

“God, I am, but you need to actually let go first–“

Liam lets go of his waist, gladly.

Niall shoves the ladder off with a clang and rolls away from Liam. “Sorry,” he says, looking just as stunned as the older boy, if not more. Considering he’s the one who just fell about ten feet with a ladder in his hands, Liam doesn’t blame him.

“It’s okay.” Gritting his teeth, Liam pushes the pain out of his mind and stands up. He has no time to think about that; unsurprisingly, they’ve attracted some unwanted attention.

“Stay behind me,” Liam orders. He picks up his axe and grips it, falling into a familiar stance.

The zombies snarl, spittle and blood and god-knows-what flying from their rotting mouths. He’d been right; they are slower, limping sluggishly towards the source of the noise, but that didn’t make them any less dangerous.

“Fuck if I will!” Niall scrambles to his feet, waving up at the roof. “Oi, throw me down my bag, will you?”

Ariel’s face splats on the ground.

“Liam?” It’s Harry’s voice that rings out, loud and almost hysterical. “I’m coming down–“

“No! Stay up there, Harry!” They can’t risk another injury; as miraculous as Niall’s bandages had been, Liam isn’t sure that the boy has any more. And speaking of Niall: “Hey, what are you–“

Niall seems to magically produces a foot-long machete from his bag. Upon noticing Liam’s gaping, he shrugs and says, “You guys never checked the front pocket.”

Indeed they hadn’t. Liam shakes his head; he’ll address that later. “Fought one of these things before?”

Niall gives him a look that vaguely conveys something like “ _are you kidding me?_ ” “You take the one by the dumpster, and I’ll get the other one, yeah?” There’s a breathless sound to his voice, and his blue eyes are bright and alive and, to Liam, unnerving.

For the first time, he is a little frightened by this boy.

“Ready?” Niall asks.

Liam gives a tight nod. “Ready.”

 

xvi.

His mind shuts down as it always does. A knock from the blunt side of his axe sends the undead crashing into the dumpster. A uniform swing of his axe lodges the blade through the thing’s neck, pinning it to metal. There are a few moments when the bones and tendons hold, and then the separated body finally slithers to the ground.

Liam ignores the head that rolls by his feet.

You can’t think about it, he knows. You can’t think about how these used to be people. You can’t think about who they might have been before, and if they had family, friends. You can’t think about the possibility that somewhere underneath that rotting flesh, a part of them might still be conscious and that they may have lost control of their bodies but they’re still screaming in their minds.

You can’t think, because if you think, you will sure as hell hesitate, and that’s when things could get ugly.

Liam knows.

So when a graying hand uncurls to reveal a crumpled picture of a father and his daughter, he refuses to look, just kicks the limb away and sends the picture fluttering to the wind.

 

xvii.

Niall is aware.

He feels it all and will relive it hundreds of times in the next few days until it gets replaced by a fresh memory.

He meets his halfway. An arm reaches blindly at him, and he knocks it aside, grabs the thing’s shoulder, yanks it forward so it stumbles to its knees.

This is where he hears the dull clang of metal, undoubtedly the sound of Liam’s axe–

Niall ignores it, planting a knee hard into the infected’s back and keeping it still as it tries in vain to escape. He lines the tip of the machete along a familiar spot in its neck and pushes. Flesh gives way easily.

The squirming stops.

 

xviii.

“Do you trust me?”

“Not really.”

But they have no choice, so:

Niall indicates to the ladder. “Grab that end. Hold on tightly, yeah?” He even shoots Liam an amiable smile, as if they’re not both splattered with blood and about to try something either incredibly clever or incredibly stupid.

Liam obliges.

“Tell them that the bakery's a block that way.” Niall points down the street to the right. “Red and white striped walls, can’t miss it. We'll meet there.”

“You could tell them yourself.”

“If you don’t trust me, they probably don’t, either.”

Liam relays the information. Louis starts protesting immediately, but Harry calms him down, holds him back from the edge before he accidentally spills over. “What about you?” Zayn calls down, seeming the calmest out of the three.

“When you hear the clanging noise, wait until the store clears, then you run for the bakery, okay?” Niall says it himself this time. He shoulders his backpack and motions towards the alley opening.

“What clanging?” Liam asks, puzzled.

“This clanging,” Niall says bluntly, and he starts hitting the ladder with his machete. Liam has no time to be shocked, because Niall is urging him on with a, “Just run for it!”

 

xix.

“You’re mental!” Liam screams as he runs with the ladder behind him..

“But it worked!” Niall calls back gleefully. “They’re out!”

Liam’s too preoccupied to look back (and he doesn’t really want to see how many zombies are following them), but he finds himself trusting Niall’s word. “Okay, what now?” His arms are already aching from the strain, and it feels like the ladder gained fifty pounds in the last two minutes.

“You can drop it. We’re fine.” Niall stops abruptly at the end of the street, and Liam all but throws the ladder to the ground.

“Are you sure they made it out?” Liam gasps out, nearly doubled over and trying to catch his breath.

“Positive.” Niall pushes a hand through his sweat dampened hair, offering Liam a tired grin. “Don’t mean to rush you, but there’s a horde of zombies coming after us.” He braces himself against a car, only to startle when a car alarm pierces the air. “Shit,” he mumbles.

“Make that two hordes, I think.” Liam shakes his head, grabbing Niall before the boy can get out an apology. “In here.” He pushes him into an alley, even though the sight of it makes him grimace; he’s getting pretty sick of alleys.

“Here. Turn here.” Niall tugs his arm free, gesturing to their left. “They’re all connected, so we’ll get to the bakery this way.”

Looking back, Liam sees that the zombies are too busy clamoring around the car. “Okay, let’s go,” he says, still breathless. He turns to see Niall rummaging in his backpack. “Niall?”

He watches as the blond takes out a container of sanitizer and dumps a gratuitous amount on his hands. For a second he thinks he sees him trembling, but he doesn’t get a chance to say anything of it. Niall zips his bag up, slips it on, and starts down the alley. “Coming?”

 

xx.

When Niall gets grabbed, he nearly chops off Harry’s hand.

“Hey!” Harry grunts, catching his arm before the machete swings down and decapitates him. “Calm down, it’s me. It’s us.”

“Oh my god,” Louis is chanting. “That was– Jesus, Liam, are you okay?”

“ ’m fine.” Liam shuts the back door, and Zayn wastes no time pushing a shelf of baking ingredients to barricade it. “That was insane.”

Niall is wrenched from Harry’s arms and into Liam’s. He lets out an involuntary squeak when Liam squeezes him none too gently. Liam only laughs into his hair. “Saved our asses, that’s what you did.”

 

xxi.

Harry is the one who asks the question, “What now?”

Sandwiched between Liam and Zayn, Niall proffers, “I left a truck, just outside of town.”

Four pairs of eyes stare incredulously at him.

 

xxii.

“I thought you were going to kill me! I wasn’t about to give you my car while I was at it.” He huffs and crosses his arms.

Honestly.

 

xxiii.

Harry is also the one who wonders out loud, “Do you think any of the ovens are still working?”

“Haz.” Louis groans. “You’re not baking in the middle of a zombie apocalypse.”

Except Liam manages to get the backup generator running and Zayn finds a bag of unopened flour – Harry high fives Zayn and declares, “Tonight, we feast!”

 

xxiv.

From underneath a table, Niall listens to the soft chatter from the back, punctuated by occasional clangs and barely muffled giggles. Liam had seen him as he walked past and asked a surprisingly gentle, “Feeling all right?” to which Niall replied with a smile and affirmative. Then the other boy had joined Louis by the front, piling chairs and tables to block the entrance.

He hears whispers from them too, but it seems like a tense conversation. Feeling like an intruder, Niall tries to give them some privacy by blocking them out.

He keeps himself distracted by tapping a nameless rhythm on the floor. He thinks of how Liam had lobbed off that zombie’s head, so… _mercilessly_.

He once told his brother he felt bad for all the ones they killed. He never really wrapped his mind around the notion that these weren’t people anymore. “Maybe it’s because you’re part zombie,” Greg had teased, referring to his bite. “Kind of like being a vegetarian or something.” Niall had snorted in disbelief.

Eventually, he drifts off, dreaming of nothing in particular. When he wakes, someone is crawling under the table, and at first he nearly panics and grabs for his machete.

It’s only Harry.

“Sweet dreams, Blondie?” the curly haired boy asks, settling in comfortably beside him.

Niall hums sleepily. It’s darker than earlier, and he wonders if the boys have boarded up the windows, or if he had slept far longer than he thought.

“You were smiling.” Harry gives him this kind of look, one that’s a mixture of amusement and concern and perhaps fondness.

Niall sits up as much as he can without bumping his head. “Do you think zombies can still smell cupcakes?” he whispers conspiratorially.

“Even if they did, they’re not getting any.” Harry hands him a cupcake, chocolate flavored and messily topped with blue frosting. “There wasn’t too much frosting left, sorry.”

“It’s fine.” Niall takes it gratefully. “Man, I haven’t eaten one of these in a long time.”

Harry shifts, folding his legs underneath him so that they’re facing each other. “We’ll try to get to that truck of yours in the morning,” he says. “Then we’ll all make it to the safe zone and maybe they’ll let me make more cupcakes.”

Niall looks down at the cupcake in his hand. _We’ll all make it_ , Harry said. All of them. Niall shakes his head, giving the other boy a tiny grin. “I’m sure the new world will be in dire need of bakers.” He adds sincerely, “Thanks for the cupcake, though.”

“Ah, that’s what I was waiting for.” Harry chuckles. “Here, give me your hand.” Niall humors him, and Harry takes the opportunity to bump their cupcakes together in some mock toast. “Cupcakes for the end of the world,” he says, green eyes bright. “Cheers, mate.”


	4. xxv. - xlv.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for taking so long with this!! i had a bunch of work to take care of and i couldn't find time to sit down and write ;A;
> 
> i really had fun with this chapter, though, and i hope you guys like reading it as much as i liked writing it, haha. it also occurred to me that i never did a disclaimer, and since this fic is going to be rampant with references and scenes inspired by a lot of different things, i should probably do it now - i don't own One Direction or anything referenced in here, and they belong to their respective owners. uwu
> 
> lastly, i wrote this all in one sitting and was up until like 3am last night and couldn't be bothered to proofread. forgive any typos because i swear i'll get around to editing later!!

xxv.

Niall falls asleep under the table using his bag as a pillow. Naturally, wakes up to an awful crick in his neck…and Harry leaning heavily on his side. Liam and Louis are already up and packing by the counter, but they make shushing noises at him, so he’s mindful of Harry as he crawls out.

Zayn is asleep in one of the booths, on his side with one hand near his crossbow. Niall is extra careful about walking past him, because he’s already been shot at once.

Louis notices this and seems to smirk. “Our little guard dog, he is,” he says, vaguely boastful.

“Don’t let him hear you calling him little,” Liam says, nudging the other boy, and Louis chuckles.

Niall yawns, taking a seat on one of the stools at the counter. “What time is it?”

“About half past nine.” Liam is packing away the leftover cupcakes (or muffins, since Harry hadn’t had enough frosting for them, and weren’t muffins just frosting-less cupcakes after all?). “We’re going to try to get to that truck of yours by tonight.”

“Yeah, where is that, by the way?” Louis chimes in.

Niall’s not awake enough to tell them, so he unzips his bag and takes out a map of the city. It’s wrinkled and stained and one corner of it has been ripped off due to a scuffle he’d had with an overzealous zombie, but otherwise it’s intact. He spreads it out on the counter and gestures to the left side of the city. “The roads were too crowded for me to take it in any further, so I left it out here.” He points off the map.

“What else have you got in that bag?” he hears Louis grumble. He and Liam peer at the map. “Wow.”

There are Sharpie marks all over, from question marks to labels to random x’s. Liam shakes his head. “So you’ve been around.”

“Yeah. Been almost everywhere except this area.” Niall taps the lower left corner, where he’s circled the whole block with a question mark.

“Okay, and where are we?”

Niall observes thoughtfully. A few seconds later, he points again, this time to a mark he had made with Sharpie. “This was the toy store,” he says. “Hold on.” He digs around for said marker, bringing it out a few seconds later to mark something north of the toy store. “And this is the bakery.”

“Jesus,” he hears Louis breathe out. “We’re all the way across the city from that truck.”

Liam shakes his head, and Niall slumps a little, figuring that his plan is now a bust. Well, at least he tried, right? “What’s this?” Liam taps another spot that’s been circled with a question mark and multiple x’s.

“Oh, that,” Niall says, chewing on the end of the Sharpie. “Supermarket.”

“What’s the question mark for?”

“I stopped by two days ago – see if I could salvage anything, you know? Practically the whole front was boarded up, so I was going to sneak through the back, but then I heard gunshots and shouting. Didn’t want to get any closer after that.”

“There were people hiding?”

“Probably holed themselves up in there.” Niall bites his lip. “I marked it because I figured I’d stop by again, when  all those things might’ve finally cleared.  If those people bothered to stay, there must have been something useful, right?” He laughs, though nothing is really funny. “That makes me sound like a dick.”

“Given the circumstances, I can’t say that I blame you,” Louis says. Niall looks at him in surprise, but the other boy is still studying the map.

They spend another few minutes, which pass by in silence (save for Zayn’s soft snoring). Finally, Liam makes this affirmative little nod and taps a finger on the supermarket. “We’ll stop by.”

“Think it’s really cleared up?” Louis murmurs to him.

“Niall said that the front was boarded up. We could go through the back, seal it off, and take care of any still left inside. Then we loot the place.”

“But—“

“We barely have anything left, Lou.”

Louis drags a hand down his face, not looking as willing as Liam is, and the two launch into a conversation that makes Niall feel like he’s intruding, so he hops off the stool and ambles off.

“Thanks, Niall,” Liam says before he leaves, and Niall smiles back.

“No problem.”

 

xxvi.

He feels like he owes them for taking him in. They aren’t like the people from that safe zone or the supermarket. They aren’t locking him up behind bars or in a freezer. Things got off to a bumpy start, but he’s still with them now, isn’t he?

This is the least he can do.

 

xxvii.

“We’re going to raid a supermarket?” Harry asks later on, sounding far too excited than he should be. Niall swallows back a giggle.

Louis smacks Harry upside the head. “Be serious.” He glares at the curly haired boy, but there’s a little bit of affection there.

“Yeah, it’s not going to be like _Zombieland_ or something,” Liam pitches in.

“Why’re you two always ganging up on me? Zayn, help me out here.” Harry tugs on the darker haired lad’s arm. Zayn merely shrugs, busy not paying attention, and Harry whines.

For a second, Niall is envious of the friendship between the four boys. He wonders, maybe, if someday he could be part of the group too.

 

xxviii.

Then he wonders if that’s a silly thing to be worrying about right now.

 

xxix.

The walk to the supermarket is a relatively short one – nothing compared to the distance they would have to travel to get to the truck – but it feels like miles. Zayn and Niall take point, because:

“Holy shit,” Louis says appreciatively as Zayn stuns a zombie with an arrow to the eye and Niall finishes off the job by sinking his machete into the back of its neck. “Holy _shit_ ,” Louis says once again, when Niall shoves the limp body to the ground.

“Beautiful teamwork,” Harry says dreamily.

So yeah, that’s how it’s decided that Niall and Zayn will take the lead, because according to everyone, they’re a good team. That, and they’re the only ones who can kill quickly, neatly, and quietly.

“Liam’s just being a lazy bastard. He likes cuddling up to Lou,” Zayn whispers conspiratorially to him, and Niall has this stupid grin on his face for the rest of the way.

 

xxx.

The emergency exit in the back is ajar and streaked with blood. Harry assumes that’s where the zombies got in and took the group by surprise. Maybe someone had been on watch and accidentally dozed off.

He shakes the thoughts from his mind and goes to help Liam find something to block the door with. The others take out a few stragglers nearby. Harry doesn’t mean to stare, but he ends up watching Niall. The blond always does something to weaken the zombies first, before using that machete to sever their spines.

 _Why does he do it so carefully?_ Harry wonders, and chalks it up as number seventeen on his List of Things to Ask Niall. (Number one is still _Are you Irish?_ which Harry still hasn’t been able to ask him, goddammit.)

“Harry, pay attention, please.” Liam is digging through a shelf of stuffed animals. Harry’s not sure what he’s expecting to find there.

“Would this work?” asks Zayn, stepping up and twirling something around his fingers, and Harry positively grins when he realizes what it is.

“Handcuffs? I never pegged you for a kinky one, Zaynie,” Louis says unhelpfully.

“We’re going to handcuff the door?” Niall runs his fingers through his hair, and Harry wants to slap his hand away and do it himself.

Hm.

“No, I was thinking we should handcuff you to the door, since your ass is probably big enough to weight it down.” Zayn smirks.

“One, that doesn’t make sense, and two, my ass is just fucking fine, thank you.” Louis flips him off. “Li Li, tell him my ass is fine.”

“The handcuffs could work,” Liam says instead, accepting the cuffs. “Under that shelf – pass me that piece of wood, will you, Niall?”

And eventually, the door is barricaded. It’s a little flimsy, but they’d taken out most of the zombies in the back anyway, and it isn’t like they’re going to be attracting attention.

“Traitors.” Louis shoots Liam an exaggerated sneer before making off for the front.

 

xxxi.

As they’re sweeping through the frozen goods section, they encounter a very nasty surprise that jumps out one of the freezers. Niall’s pinned to the ground and ninety-nine percent sure that he’s going to get another bite mark, when suddenly the body is yanked off him. His head spins and he barely looks over in time to see Liam swinging his axe.

“Thanks,” Niall says shakily when Liam pulls him up.

“That was for getting us out of the toy store.” Liam shakes his head, smiling a little.

“I guess pizza’s out of the question?” Zayn kicks a box of frozen pizza, sending it skittering across the tile. “I think we should clear this place before going shopping.”

Niall, not particularly keen on getting jumped by another half frozen zombie, nods.

Harry, the one pushing their shopping cart full of supplies, decides to speak up at this moment. “I have an idea.”

 

xxxii.

“Dare I ask what you’re going to do with that frying pan,” Liam says wryly.

Harry only grins, leaping up to the counter and nearly kicking off the cash register in the process. Various pens and papers go flying. He had made a sweep through the kitchen appliances section (and took out two zombies); in his left hand is a frying pan, and in his right is a metal spatula.

“Would anyone else care to join me up here?” he says, spreading his arms grandly across the rest of the counter space. “Lou? Zayn?”

“Not until you tell us what you’re going to do, Styles.” Zayn stares pointedly.

“Did we or did we not see _Zombieland_ a total of seven times?”

“ _Again_ , Hazza, this isn’t a movie—“

“Aw, come on! We might as well have fun in hell!” Harry turns his puppy eyes on Niall, who squirms uncomfortably under the tempting sight. “Niall?”

“Never seen the movie,” the blond admits.

“You absolute _heathen_.” Harry nudges his shoulder with a foot. “Fine, just be ready.” With that, he takes a deep breath, counts to three, and then bangs out a quick _one-two-three-four_ with his kitchen supplies. Then he bellows, his voice resonating loudly throughout the store: “ _One way or another—“_

The first one, a woman with a gaping hole on her neck, emerges before he can even finish the first line.

“Harry, you _bitch_ ,” Louis utters.

Harry grins all the wider, clangs the pan some more, and continues on, “— _I’m gonna find you, I’m gonna get’cha, get’cha, get’cha_ —“

 

xxxiii.

At first, it’s more like the four of them scrambling to keep up with all the undead cropping up, while Harry continues his mock tap dance on the counter, still banging and shouting away.

Then Liam does this _thing_ : his axe gets lodged in some fat zombie’s bulging stomach, leaving him defenseless against the other one lunging for him. The brunet grabs for the nearest thing and bashes it into the snarling man’s face.

It falls to the floor, squirming and grabbing wildly at his face, and Liam stares dumbstruck at the sight.

“Oh my god, Li!” Louis cackles. “Did you just— _plunge_ it?” It sends Niall into hysterics, and he almost forgets that he’s in the middle of stabbing someone until he gets thrown off, and Zayn has to shoot the thing for him.

It opens the floodgates.

 

xxxix.

Harry’s not the only one singing anymore; Louis’s voice joins his, echoing all around them, and Niall even chimes in during the parts he knows.

“This is kind of fun,” he says through his labored breathing, leaning heavily on a shelf.

Zayn pulls out an arrow from a woman’s neck. “Oodles of fun.” His tone is grave but his brown eyes are light with mischief.

In the aisle over, Harry belts out, “ _One day, maybe next week, I’m gonna meet’cha—“_

“Niall?”

“Hm?”

“Duck.”

Niall doesn’t even question it and drops to his knees. There’s a distinct _twang_ as Zayn’s crossbow fires, and Niall shudders when the body collapses on his back. He shoves it off, frowning up at Zayn.

“You need to stop saving me,” he says. “How much do I even owe you now?”

“I tried to shoot your dick off when we met,” Zayn says by way of explanation. “And your bandages were a miracle. I’ll just call it even, yeah?” He offers his hand.

Niall takes it with a grin.

 

xl.

Harry finishes the song and makes it halfway through _Can You Feel the Love Tonight_ when Niall finds him in the dairy section, using his frying pan to bash the zombie’s head into a pulp.

Niall averts his eyes from the gruesome sight, waiting until Harry decides he’s finished.

They each have their fair share of bloody garments, and they all have flecks of blood everywhere, and Niall feels gross and slimy and thrumming and _alive_.

Harry tosses his frying pan aside, turns, and grins wolfishly at Niall. Before the Irish boy can even blink, Harry strides over, grabs the sides of his head, and kisses him smack on the lips.

 

xli.

What worries Niall: why Harry did That.

“That was bloody marvelous,” Harry says breathlessly, and whether he’s referring to their massive killing spree or the kiss, Niall isn’t sure. “Wait a minute.” Green eyes go wide, and Harry lets go of him, stepping back. “You didn’t have any blood on your mouth, did you?”

Niall has difficulty getting one word out. “No…?”

“Good.” The grin is back and Harry pats his cheek before brushing right past him.

What worries Niall even more: of all the things to have questions about, Harry Styles’s first to ask was “Did you have any blood on your mouth?”

 

xlii.

“I don’t know whether I want to kill you or snog you,” Louis declares when Harry and Niall join them back at the counter.

“Snog me, Lou,” Harry coos, making kissy faces at him.

Liam sees the way Niall shrinks a little and makes a mental note to talk to Harry about his…flamboyant nature. The four of them have been friends for the longest of times, so naturally, they’re immutable to each other’s various quirks. But Niall isn’t as used to them, and he’s _nice_ , so Liam doesn’t want any of them scaring him away.

“Clean yourselves off before you start touching any food,” he tells them, handing out packages of baby wipes he’d found.

“It’s insane,” Harry’s still babbling, tearing open his pack and starting to scrub his hands. “I found a few bottles of pop in the back, and get this – they’re cold! Thank god for backup generators, am I right? Those people really took care of this place. I mean, before we bloodied all the floors up, everything was really clean, did you notice? They took all the stuff from the storage and even arranged them on the shelves.”

Louis nods eagerly. “Zayn and I looked in the back, and it’s like they transformed it into some camping ground – there were sleeping bags everywhere! Which kind of makes me wonder, where the hell did they all go? That couldn’t have been all of them. We wouldn’t have lasted against so many.”

“Maybe some of them got out.”

“Yeah, I hope. I found some blocks, like the one for little kids, and…yeah, I really hope some got out.”

“We didn’t see any zombie babies, so I think that’s a safe bet.”

“You okay?” Liam turns to Niall as Harry and Louis drift off in their own conversation. He sizes up the blond, notes the way he looks a little shaken, his cheeks tinged pink. Liam really needs to talk to Harry about being careful with Niall.”

“I’m fine.” Niall wipes the blood from his neck, offering him a smile. “Just lots of energy left over. I feel like I’m coming down from a high.”

“Harry’ll do that to you.” Liam nods grimly towards his curly haired friend.

“Missed a spot!” Zayn jumps in between them, swiping at a nonexistent smudge on Niall’s cheek.

Liam laughs as a chase starts up, and he and Harry and Louis sit on the counter and watch as Zayn and Niall run around, throwing baby wipes at each other.

If you ignored the amount of spilled blood and guts and dead bodies around them, Liam thinks that this is kind of nice.

 

xliii.

“I think we should stay here for a little bit,” Louis suggests, when they’re all sitting behind the counter, passing around a bag of animal crackers.

They’re all a little beaten, with new bruises and scratches and aches in absurd places on their bodies. Some of Zayn’s arrows had broken permanently, reducing his stock to a mere seven, so he makes it a goal to find something else soon. The blade of Liam’s axe had completely fallen off, and Louis had to waste a shot of his rifle when Zayn got cornered. But the pros outweigh the cons, and Liam thinks there’s a mutual satisfaction from everyone.

Louis is leaning into Liam’s side, and Liam wraps an arm comfortably around his shoulders, accepting him.

“Agreed.” Harry raises a finger. Most of the adrenaline has worn off by now, and his cheeks are starting to ache from having smiled so much. “We can’t take all this stuff with us, and it would be a waste to leave them behind…”

“So we use them up, and then we take what we can for the road,” Liam finishes. “Sounds like a good plan.”

“Thanks, I came up with it all by myself,” Louis boasts, earning a sharp elbow from Harry.

“We could sleep in the back. There weren’t any bodies back there, right? And we could take some of them when we leave, too.” Zayn has Niall’s Little Mermaid backpack in his lap, and Liam can’t see what he’s doing, but it must be something entertaining; Niall is at his side, definitely looking amused. Liam thinks it’s good, because Niall has been a bit quiet in the past hour.

“A few things, though.” Louis sits up, snapping to get all of their attention. “You’re all going to help me drag as many of those dead bodies out. Then we’re going to make sure that nothing we touch is… _contaminated_.”

“And if we’re going to stay, we’ll have to find something sturdier than handcuffs and a wooden plank,” Liam adds.

Harry groans and says what they’re all thinking, “That’s a lot of work.”

“I found ice cream in one of the freezers,” Liam cajoles. “Afterwards, we can eat all we want…”

Harry and Louis are on their feet in an instant.

 

xliv.

They have a brief moment of panic when Zayn almost can’t find the key to the handcuffs.

“Imagine the headlines when this all blows over!” Louis throws his hands into the air. “Five boys, starved to death because the doors had been locked…with handcuffs!”

“Calm your tits, I’ve got it,” Zayn grouses. He didn’t quite enjoy pawing through the policeman’s dead body, but he’s found the key, so.

“Harry and I’ll start with the bodies.” Liam pauses. “Zayn, you’ll keep watch. I doubt anything will be able to sniff us out with all this rotting shit, but you’re still in no condition to be lifting things.”

Zayn is quick to argue: “That’s bullshit—“

“No, it’s making sure you’re okay.” Liam stares him down until the other boy backs off, and he hopes Zayn understands. Sometimes he worries for the others more than what is considered normal.

“Niall and Louis,” he continues, “find something we can use to block the doors. Check the front, too, see if anything’s loose or about to break. Then afterwards, you could help me and Harry carry the bodies out.”

Niall shoots him a grateful look, probably because he hadn’t been assigned with taking out the dead bodies.

“So much work,” Harry hisses.

“But _ice cream_ , Haz,” Louis whines, tugging him over the counter.

“Easy for you to say, you’re not the one who has to touch those things again.”

“I’ll help clean you off afterwards, how ‘bout that?”

“You’ll give me some of your ice cream afterwards, how ‘bout that?”

“You’re pushing it, Styles.”

Liam rolls his eyes, getting up to his feet. There are times when he feels like he’s leading a group of children – with the exception of Zayn, maybe. And he hasn’t been with Niall long enough to make a judgment of him yet.

“Ready?” he asks them.

Zayn shows him Niall’s bag, pride evident across his face.

Apparently, he has spent the past fifteen minutes doodling eyeliner and piercings and black lipstick on Ariel’s face. “Emo mermaids,” he says, very seriously, and Niall giggle-snorts, and Liam takes back what he thought about Zayn being an exception.

 

xlv.

There are currently a million and one questions running through Niall Horan’s head, and he feels like he’s going to spontaneously combust if he has to sit in silence again, so he’s glad when Louis strikes up a conversation. It’s more of a one-sided conversation, but Niall doesn’t mind listening.

“Surprisingly, that wasn’t the craziest thing Haz has ever done,” Louis says. He starts pushing on the boards to make sure they’re secure. “That’s what we call Harry, by the way. Sometimes Zayn is Z, and Liam’s Li, and I’m Lou. Sometimes those wankers call me Loubear. But anyway, crazy shit that Harry’s done. Right. There was this one time on his eighteenth birthday, he got piss drunk and we dared him to streak – well, Zayn and I did. Liam was trying to tell him no, the little killjoy.”

“Did Harry actually do it?” Niall lowers his voice, worried that they’ll be heard. They’re at the front of the store, checking on the windows, and the others are in the back, but sound seems to carry rather well.

“Oh, yeah.” Louis waves a hand dismissively. “Harry was absolutely shitfaced, so of course he didn’t remember any of it in the morning. We occasionally remind him with pictures.” He grins.

Niall chuckles. They reach the end of the barred windows and turn into the hardware aisle. Niall steps gingerly over a zombie. “Hey, think we can use these chains?” He picks out an unopened pack dangling from the rack.

“Ooh, definitely!” Louis claps. “Are there any padlocks left? There!”

They pick out the biggest one. “Better than handcuffs,” Louis remarks sagely. “You’ve got a good eye, Niall.”

“Actually, they were just hanging there…”

“Shush, I’m trying to compliment you.”

Neither of them feels like carrying any dead bodies, so they opt to sit down and wait a little while longer. Louis fiddles around with the padlock, and Niall wonders if it’s okay for him to talk.

“So,” he begins, semi-awkwardly, “are any of you…”

“Gay?” Louis questions without even blinking.

Niall feels his cheeks grow hot. “I was going to ask if any of you were related…”

“Oh. Sorry, then.” Louis actually doesn’t sound apologetic at all. “Nope, none of us are related, which is a very good thing, since incest is usually frowned upon and whatnot.”

Niall wonders what that means. He manages a small nod, asking furtively, “So, you and Harry…?”

“Me and Harry?” Louis looks at him for a full two seconds before bursting into laughter. Niall, bewildered, sits there as the other boy practically doubles over. “Why does everyone think that?”

Niall tries to disappear into the shelves. Unfortunately, it does not work. “Well, the way you two were acting…!” he protests.

“I don’t think either of us really have any boundaries,” Louis explains, the same way one would go about explaining a math problem, “and we’ve been friends for a really long time. After a while, lines get blurry, and.” He shrugs. “But me and him, no. He’s like…my brother.”

“Oh. Okay.” Niall doesn’t know what to say, because this isn’t how he envisioned the conversation to go. He resolves to talk to Harry about That; surely Harry didn’t make a habit of going around, stealing people’s first kisses.

He and Louis fall quiet for a few seconds, but Louis ends up breaking the silence.

“Liam, on the other hand,” he says with a low whistle, and Niall chokes on spit.

Louis laughs at him again, exclaiming, “Just kidding!” though he doesn’t look like he’s kidding. Wiping imaginary tears from his eyes, he opens his mouth to say something else, only to be interrupted by another voice.

“Oi! Are you two slackin’ off up there?” Harry shouts.

“Oops!” Louis scrambles to his feet, grabbing Niall’s hand and pulling him up as well. “They can’t say we got no work done.” He holds up the chains and padlock confidently. “Right, let’s head back.”

He slings an arm around Niall’s shoulders as if it’s perfectly natural, and Niall is still a little flustered from what transpired, but he obediently follows Louis back to the other boys.

This, he thinks, could be the start of something.


	5. xlvi. - lviii.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> seriously, thank you to everyone who's reading and left feedback on this, and thank you for your patience with my updates. you guys rock, ok. ;A;

xlvi.

The storeroom’s lighting is dim; it allows Niall to see his surroundings well, but it’s not quite bright enough to light up the darkest corners of the huge space. He tries to avoid looking at those, because living in a world that’s essentially been overrun with monsters has made him a little more apprehensive about dark spaces.

He drags a sleeping bag over to the part of the floor they had declared their “campground.” Zayn is sitting on the floor, rummaging through a box.

“What’s in there?” Niall asks curiously, dropping the sleeping bag in favor of crawling over to the other boy.

“Candles.” Zayn holds one up to his face and sniffs it. “ _Scented_ candles,” he amends.

“Oh!” Niall sits next to him and tugs the box over, digging in. “We could use this to cover up that rank smell from the bodies.”

Zayn chuckles, tossing the candle rhythmically back and forth in his hands. The next few minutes pass by in silence as Niall rifles through the candles, checking their labels and setting them aside whenever one catches his interest.

When he realizes that Zayn is watching him, he pauses, sitting back slowly. “What?”

Zayn laughs again, leaning back on his palms and regarding Niall lazily. “You’re getting entertained by candles. It’s kind of cute.”

Niall’s been called cute before – by his mother and sometimes his brother, when Greg wanted to annoy him – but never by someone who isn’t related to him. “Cute” is a word to describe little children and puppies, so he’s not sure how to take it. “Uh, thank you?”

“Don’t think too much into it,” Zayn says with a shake of his head, still smiling, and Niall’s not sure how to take _that_ either.

Harry comes through the double doors before Niall can say anything else, and he’s a bit relieved for the interruption. Zayn tilts his head back, waiting until Harry’s close enough before asking, “Liam and Louis still out there?”

“Yeah.” Harry flops down next to Niall, swiping an arm across his forehead. “Lou was scrubbing his hands raw with those wipes. Liam’s trying to calm him down.”

Niall frowns in concern, momentarily forgetting The Thing that happened between him with Harry. “Is Louis okay?”

“Hm?” Harry studies him for a few seconds, only to give him a small smile. “Yeah, Lou’s okay. He’s the one who gets the most freaked out about germs and staying clean, which I can’t blame him for, but he’ll live.”

Niall considers this, remembers the amount of sanitizer he has stashed in his bag, and makes a note to do something about that later.

“What’s in here?” Harry nudges the box with his foot.

“Candles,” Zayn replies.

“ _Scented_ candles,” Niall corrects him.

“Louis’s going to be pretty happy about this.” Harry starts sifting through the box just as Niall had earlier. “They could cover up the dead body smell.”

Zayn snorts. “Niall said the same thing.”

“Great minds think alike, don’t they?” Harry shoots Niall a grin, and Niall smiles uneasily back.

The doors opened once again, and in walked Louis with a flourish and a proclamation of: “We have returned with gifts and glad tidings!” Liam trails behind him, shaking his head.

“Clean gifts?” Zayn asks as the last two take their seats around their little circle.

“Clean gifts.” Louis nods seriously, holding a plastic bag in his lap. “First thing’s first – what’s in that box, and why is it blocking my view of all your beautiful faces?”

“It’s our shield from _your_ face,” Harry retorts, while Zayn says bluntly, “Candles.”

“Zayn’s no fun.”  Harry pouts.

“Zayn doesn’t imply that my face is anything short of perfect, so I like Zayn better.” Louis sticks his tongue out at Harry, who makes a ridiculous face in return.

Liam and Zayn both roll their eyes, and Niall doesn’t think he’ll ever get tired of listening to the conversations that happen in this group.

Then he remembers something: “Do we even have anything to light candles with?”

Zayn shifts to take something out of his pocket, tossing the object over to Niall, who catches it clumsily. It’s a lighter.

“Convenient.” Niall lights one that he had picked out earlier; according to the label, it’s supposed to smell like blueberries.

“Oh, light this one, too! It says it’s apple pie scented.” Harry reaches over to share the flame, lighting his own candle. Once it’s lit, he lifts it to his nose and starts sniffing it.

Louis hums thoughtfully. “Is it possible to get high off a candle?” He grabs his own and poises it under his mouth like a microphone. “Harry Styles will find out in five minutes. Stay tuned, folks.”

Liam shakes his head. “You lot are going to end up burning this place down.”

 

xlvii.

In the end, they each light a candle. Louis picks a cinnamon scented one, and both Liam and Zayn pick candles without labels, assuming that they’re unscented.

“They’ll even out the smell, so we don’t suffocate,” Liam rationalizes.

(However, they find out that Zayn’s isn’t unscented, after all. When a rancid smell permeates the air, Harry is the first to notice: “What’s that smell?”

Zayn holds up his candle and appears to read something beneath it. “I guess I missed the label. It says it’s…vanilla?”

“Vanilla, my ass,” Louis grumbles. “Smells more like a dead body. Put that out, Zayn!”

So they do, and Niall even volunteers himself to stuff the candle in one of the farthest corners of the storeroom.

“What a hero,” Louis crows when he comes back, clapping slowly and loudly. “What a brave man.”)

They place their candles around different shelves. Harry takes the longest, fixated with his, and Niall’s starting to think that he _is_ getting high when Zayn nudges his arm and whispers, “He used to work in a bakery.”

Niall watches as Harry places his candle carefully on a shelf, a fond smile playing on his lips.

Zayn pats him on the shoulder, and Niall glances at him. “He just misses it.”

 

xlviii.

He and Harry get assigned first watch, which is kind of convenient and terrifying at the same time. He has no choice but to swallow his fears, though, because Harry is already tugging him out of the storeroom.

“Good night!” Niall calls over his shoulders, and then the doors are shutting behind him.

Harry seems to know what he’s doing; Niall follows him down the aisle. “So, Blondie!” the brunet exclaims, suddenly turning around and making Niall almost walk into him. “Welcome to the night shift.”

Niall scratches his nose, pondering the nickname for a few seconds. “And what does the night shift entail, exactly?”

“Exciting stuff, such as,” Harry counts off his fingers as he goes, “peace, doing nothing, quiet, sitting down, doing nothing, staring at the door, and…doing nothing.”

“Fun,” Niall comments as they arrive at the door.

“I know, right?” Harry takes a seat against the wall, sighing. “We’ll find something to do.”

 

il..

Niall’s not sure who suggested it first, but they find themselves playing rock-paper-scissors.

When he first beats Harry – his rock against the other boy’s scissors – Harry declares, “I have a tattoo of a butterfly.”

Niall tilts his head at him. “Good to know?”

“Oh, right, you haven’t played this before.” Harry shakes his head, as if to say _silly me._ “We’re playing modified rock-paper-scissors. Every time you lose, you have to say something about yourself. The lads and I used to play it whenever we got drunk, because a lot of interesting stuff comes out. Since you’re part of the group and all, we might as well get to know you!”

Niall wants to mention that “we” is just the two of them right now, but strangely enough, there’s something about Harry that makes him hard to refuse. So he shrugs and agrees and when he loses the next round (rock to paper), he says, “I’m from—“

“Wait!” Harry clasps his hands together and leans forward, studying him. “Are you from Ireland?”

That’s what Niall was about to say. “Yeah. Mullingar.”

“Knew it.” Harry rocks back on his heels, and Niall thinks, _Then why’d you ask?_

Harry beats him again, and Niall thinks about what to say. He decides on his age: “I’m nineteen.”

“Oh, come on, Nialler, make it more interesting,” Harry chides, and before Niall can ask where that nickname came from, he finally beats Harry.

“I sleep naked,” Harry declares, unashamed. Apparently, things like sleeping naked is the kind of _interesting_ he’s looking for.

But Niall can’t think of anything like that to say; he focuses more on beating Harry so he doesn’t have to.

 

l.

He learns the following:

Harry worked in a bakery, where he once accidentally baked raisin muffins instead of chocolate chip ones.

Harry likes John Mayer. (“ _And I’m free fallin’_ ,” he sings, not loud enough to disturb the other but loud enough that Niall _feels_ his voice, if that makes sense. He’s quite good.)

Harry watched Titanic eleven times. (“The most I’ve ever re-watched a movie!”)

Harry was in a band, before…well, you know.

There’s more – there’s definitely more. Niall files them all away very carefully.

But after his seventh consecutive loss, Harry decides to bring out the big guns.

 

li.

Literally.

 

lii.

“What is that?” Niall snorts, looking down at the finger gun that Harry is holding up.

“It’s a handgun,” Harry says like it’s supposed to explain everything. “Boom.” He pulls the “trigger” at Niall’s scissors. “And I’ve just shot your scissors. Fun fact, please.”

“Guns go bang, not boom.”

“Semantics.”

“Okay.” Niall shakes his head, leaning back on the shelf in thought. “I’ve only been kissed once,” he decides, in hopes that Harry will get it.

“There’s nothing wrong with that, mate.” Harry smiles genially at him.

Niall stares back.

Realization dawns on Harry’s face. “Wait. Does that include when I…? Oh. Shit.”

Oh shit, indeed. Niall chuckles awkwardly, drawing his knees in to his chest as if to hide. Maybe he should have said something safer, like his favorite color. “Yeah,” he says lamely, for a lack of anything else to say.

“I wasn’t thinking when I did that – I mean, you can ask the lads, and they’ll tell you that I don’t think before doing half the things I do, and—fuck, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s fine, it was just…unexpected, you know?”

“It’s not fine, Niall! I stole your first kiss when you were probably expecting to lose it to the girl of your dreams!”

“It’s not that, I.” Niall sighs, wondering how he can phrase this. “I don’t really care for labels, yeah? Kisses are kisses. I just wasn’t sure if you,” the blush returns, and he gestures in front of his face in an attempt to hide it, “meant anything by it.”

Harry’s green eyes are wide. “I didn’t mean anything by it,” he answers quickly. “I really didn’t.”

“Oh.”

“God, that made me sound like even more of an arse. Okay, here.” Harry shuffles forward on his knees, and to Niall’s surprise, he grasps his hands tightly. “You can pretend it never happened.”

Harry is leaning ridiculously close. Niall goes cross-eyed staring at his nose, until he gets carried away staring at his eyes instead. He can see flecks of at least three different shades of green (not that he’s counting).

“I’ll take it back, even.” As if their close proximity isn’t enough, Harry lets go of a hand to reach forward and swipe it across Niall’s lips like he’s grabbing something. “There.”

Niall clears his throat, gently tugging his other hand from Harry’s grip. “Thanks,” he mumbles.

Harry scoots back to the wall. He eyes Niall sheepishly. “Are you mad?”

“Mad?” Niall shakes his head. His lips are tingling and he wants to touch where Harry’s fingers had, but resists the urge. “No! ‘Course not.”

“Things aren’t going to be awkward, right?”

“Not unless you make it awkward.”

He offers Harry a smile, and slowly, Harry smiles back. “Good,” the brunet says in relief. “Because I really do like you, and I want to be friends, and it would’ve been no good if it was awkward between us.”

“I thought we already were friends,” Niall admits.

Harry tilts his head at him. Then he laughs softly, his smile growing wider. “Yeah,” he says, “yeah, I guess we are.”

 

liii.

Niall’s glad that things are cleared up now. For the rest of their watch, he feels sort of giddy. Harry suggests they continue their game, and since neither of them still can’t think of anything better to do, Niall agrees. When Harry pulls out his “handgun” again, he goes along with it, and two matches later, he throws down a fist, only to splay his fingers out wide and knock Harry’s rock over.

“I have a butterfly tattoo.” Harry peers curiously at his open hand. “What have you got there?”

“Grenade,” Niall says simply, because if Harry can make up a handgun, then he can use a grenade.

“I see.” Harry’s eyes gleam. “This is more like it.”

 

liv.

When Louis and Zayn find them, they’re in the middle of a dispute, all real semblance of rock-paper-scissors gone and replaced with something more like guns-Pokémons-explosive food.

“I obviously win,” Niall sneers haughtily. He waves his middle finger at Harry, insistent.

“I don’t even know what that is!” Harry exclaims, batting the offending hand away with his own. “But whatever it is, my bunny definitely beats you.”

“It’s a bunny! Mine’s the Elder Wand!”

“It’s not just any bunny, Niall. It’s Bunnicula.”

“Well, my wand just _avada kedavra’_ d your Bunnicula’s ass.”

“That’s a forbidden curse! Foul! Foul!”

Harry swats at Niall’s hand, Niall hits back, and a slap fight ensues.

“I think we are witnessing some disturbing mating ritual,” Louis comments blandly.

Niall withdraws his hands, partly out of embarrassment and mostly because one of Harry’s nails scratched him. (Sharp-nailed fucker.) “He started it,” he defends.

“Liar,” Harry shoots back, kicking his foot.

“You can keep staying up to settle this,” Zayn offers. “Louis and I’ll just go back to sleep.”

Both of them fall quiet at that. Niall gets to his feet, and after a moment’s consideration, he helps Harry up.

“Thanks Lou, Zayn.” Harry smiles and kisses both of their cheeks with exaggerated “Mwah!”s.

Louis rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling too. “Yeah, yeah. Good night, you two.”

“Night!” Niall chirps, before he’s being led away by Harry.

 

lv.

“We’ll settle this like men,” Harry says as they’re both getting into their sleeping bags, “tomorrow. I’m tired.” He yawns, and Niall yawns too.

“You better be ready.” It doesn’t come out half as intimidating as he intended. Niall didn’t realize how tired he actually was; that warped game of rock-paper-scissors did a good job of keeping him distracted. “Good night, Harry,” he whispers, so as to not wake Liam.

“Night, Blondie,” is the response, and Niall snuggles into his blanket and waits for sleep to come.

 

lvi.

(Niall really is glad that things are cleared up between them, but he would be lying if he said he wasn’t a little disappointed – and hurt – when Harry said _It_ hadn’t meant anything.)

 

lvii.

When Harry wakes to the feeling of something roughly shaking his shoulder, it doesn’t feel like it’s been four hours.

“Get the fuck up,” snarls a voice in his ear. Something cold is jammed against his neck, and his eyes fly wide open.

“Zayn?” he whispers uncertainly.

“You make a grab for anything, and I’ll shoot your head off.” The candles have been put out, and Harry can’t see the man’s face. “I said _get up_.”

The cold thing against his neck disappears, and a hand grabs him by the back of his shirt. Harry is too disoriented to do anything but let himself be pulled up and yanked along.

 

lviii.

He winces as he’s shoved out of the storeroom and into the brightly lit area of the actual store. There are six new men – six new _strangers_ , and that’s what jolts the last bit of sleep from his system.

They shove him to the floor, the cold, metallic thing returning to his neck. It’s the barrel of a shotgun.

From his bowed position, Harry can see the others: Louis with a bloodied mouth, Liam struggling against two of them, Zayn doubled over and clutching his stomach, and Niall—

–slumped to the ground, unmoving.

At that last sight, Harry lurches to his feet, knocking over the man behind him. He takes two steps towards the others, feels something blunt and heavy smash against the side of his head, and blacks out.


	6. lix. - lxxi.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> high school starts up again for me in two days, so unfortunately, my updates might start coming a little slower than usual. i don't think it'll ever take more than a week for each one, but i just wanted to warn you guys. ;A;
> 
> on another note- Niall's hair in this story is, for all intents and purposes, dyed instead of bleached. that is all.

lix.

When Louis first came out, it was in the spring of their sophomore year. Liam was there when he first told his parents two weeks earlier, had held his hand tight as the words stumbled out of his mouth; he was there again when Louis admitted it to Zayn and Harry. It didn’t take long for news to spread, because the high school gossip mill never stopped turning.

Louis was just one face among the thousands at the school, and most didn’t care. There were girls disappointed and some guys who became more hesitant to talk to him, but there was this general acceptance and support from his closer friends.

Then there were Exceptions – that is, Exceptional Assholes who also cared, but in a way that drove them to corner Louis in the back of the school and try to “beat the gay out of him.”

There are only a few moments in his life that Liam can recall down to the last detail, and that day is one of them: the stink of the dumpsters a few yards away, the ugly things they jeered, the red on Louis’s mouth and the bruise on his jaw. (Liam never lets himself think about what could have happened if he hadn’t found them.)

 

lx.

That’s what this feels like.

“Liam,” Louis is slurring, and Liam barely registers his voice because Niall is not moving and they have a gun held to Harry’s head and Zayn’s bandages are bleeding through again and Louis is _hurt_ — “Li, stop, stop, they have guns, _please_ _stop_.”

A knee comes down hard on his back, forcing him lower to the floor. Suddenly, he’s wrenched up just in time to see a boot come down on Louis’s wrist. There’s a sickening crack, or maybe Liam just imagines it, but the shriek that Louis lets out is definitely not part of his imagination.

“Mother _fuckers_!” Louis’s voice cracks halfway, almost a sob.

Liam goes still, his throat going dry as he remembers that day. He had to sneak a bloodied Louis through his back door so he could clean him up without being noticed, but at least he had been able to do something about it; he feels helpless now, watching as one of his best friends cradles his limp hand.

“Tie them up,” someone orders, and then the arms holding Liam down are yanking him to a kneeling position.

There are six men he can see, all clad in dark clothing. The one giving most of the orders has cropped hair and brass knuckles and a rip on the bottom of his shirt. (Liam makes sure to remember him, so that when he gets out he knows whose bones he’ll break and whose eyes he’ll gouge out for hurting his friends—)

One of them drags Louis over, and Liam doesn’t try anything as they bind their wrists together. He’s terrified of what else they’ll do.

“You learn fast, don’t you?” A man pats his cheek with his gun, and Liam instinctively lurches forward, only to freeze when Louis cries out in pain.

“Louis,” Liam utters, easing back until their heads are leaning against each other’s. He can feel every tremor that runs through Louis’s body and his blood runs cold at the thought of hurting him even more. “Lou—I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry—“

“Hurts like a bitch,” Louis says raggedly, “but I’ll live, so shut the fuck up, Liam.”

“Get the rest of them,” the man grunts. “The rest of you are coming with me.”

They disappear into the storeroom.

Liam watches as the remaining two start pulling Zayn towards Harry. When they pull Niall up, Liam hears him groan, sees his eyes flutter.

“This one looks a little familiar.” The one with flaming red hair crouches down to further study Niall, apparently interested. “Don’t he, James?”

James – the other one with a faded _Guns N’ Roses_ shirt – looks over from tying Zayn’s wrists to Harry’s. “What are you talking about?”

“Remember, a few weeks back, that guy came with his kid brother?” The redhead grabs a fistful of Niall’s hair, then barks out a laugh. “Shit, I think it is him!”

“He wasn’t a blond, dumbass.”

“Well, look, this kid isn’t a blond, either!” The man cackles, holstering his gun to kneel down next to Niall. “Dyed, I bet.”

“What does it matter?” The other looks impatient.

The red-haired man shakes his head, muttering something about his partner’s incompetence. “There’s only one way to check.” He lets go of Niall’s hair and starts tugging the zipper of his jacket open.

“Don’t touch him,” Zayn growls, speaking for the first time. There’s a gash on the right side of his stomach, soaking his shirt with red. “Don’t you dare.”

“Shut up, or I’ll break your friend’s other wrist,” the man snorts in return.

One of Niall’s fingers twitch.

“Doesn’t matter,” Louis speaks up. His tone, at first a little hoarse, becomes almost calm, melodic: “If you touch him, I’ll find a way to gouge your eyes out and slice all your fingers off. Then I’ll send you out in the streets, and you’ll be blinded and screaming. You’ll be fucking eaten alive.”

“Shut ‘im up, James.” The redhead turns away, but not before Liam catches a glimpse of uneasiness on his face.

The other man, James, makes his way over to Louis, tugging a bandana from his pocket. As he leans down to stuff it into Louis’s mouth, Louis jerks his upper body forward and slams his forehead into James’s nose.

The man stumbles back with a surprised yelp, clutching at his face.

His partner whips around at the noise, and at that moment, Niall’s eyes fly open and he raises a foot to kick, catching him in the stomach.

“The gun!” Liam’s eyes flicker to the double doors, half expecting the rest of them to come out any minute. “On his right hip, there! Get it, Niall!”

Everything happens too fast and too slow at the same time: James staggers to his feet, only to fall again when Zayn moves his foot to trip him. The other man recovers quicker, and before Liam can warn him, a fist connects with Niall’s temple and sends the boy sprawling on his back.

“You’re just as feisty as I remember.” The redhead laughs breathlessly, coming to stand over Niall’s legs. “I wonder, do you still have that brand—“

Niall brings his leg up and kicks him square in the crotch.

 

lxi.

Niall doesn’t flinch when he pulls the trigger, not even when he feels a fleck of blood on his cheek and the recoil of the handgun.

He turns to the other one and doesn’t think twice about shooting him, either.

He starts for Liam and Louis, but Liam shakes his head frantically: “Zayn and Harry first.”

Niall’s just loosened the ropes when the other men burst through from the back. There’s a moment’s pause as their eyes fall on the two dead bodies.

Two more shots ring out; the first misses and the second catches one of their shoulders.

Niall pulls the trigger one more time, but it clicks, empty.

The man with brass knuckles takes a step towards him.

“Niall,” says Zayn evenly, “run.”

 

lxii.

A split second after Niall turns and ducks into an aisle, a bullet pierces the ground where he used to be standing.

At the sound, Zayn feels Harry jolt behind him. Zayn has no time to think about it; the man with a shotgun starts forward, and he tugs his hand free of the ropes and tackles him.

The other two are already ahead, chasing Niall, and Zayn grunts as he slams the guy’s head into the ground. “Harry, they’re going to get Niall!” he shouts at the dazed-looking boy, and at the mention of Niall, Harry pushes himself to his feet, grabs the shotgun, and starts running.

Hands are scrabbling against his chest desperately, and Zayn only tightens his hold on the man’s head. He hisses as fingers press painfully against his open wound.

There’s another gunshot.

He smashes him into the floor one last time, and the man passes out cold.

Zayn ignores the blood on his hands and runs after Harry.

 

lxiii.

There’s a gun to Niall’s head. “Take one more step and I pull the trigger,” the man snarls. He presses the gun to Niall’s temple, his brass knuckles glinting in the low light.

Harry steps over a dead body, keeping his face devoid of emotion. “What makes you think I care?” he asks, twitching an eyebrow.

“Your friends seemed to.”

“Well, I’m not them.”

Niall’s blue eyes are wide and brimming with confusion and hurt; Harry avoids looking at him because he can’t fuck up now.

He cocks the shotgun and aims, ignoring the massive pounding in his head. He says, calmly, “You have until three before I shoot through you both.” He sees the man falter. “One.”

Harry doesn’t even get to two before Niall is released and the man scrambles out the door. It slams shut after him, leaving the supermarket eerily quiet.

Harry throws the shotgun aside instantly and takes a step towards Niall, but the blond is still wide eyed and takes a shaky step backwards.

“Harry? Niall?” Zayn appears from an aisle, panting for breath and clutching his stomach. “Oh, thank god. Are you two okay?”

Harry manages a nod. “Liam and Louis…?” he asks uncertainly, remembering seeing them bound.

“I’ve got them. Just needed to make sure you were…” Zayn shakes his head, waving in Harry’s direction. “I’m not sure if Liam’s hurt, but Lou’s hand is busted. C’mon.”

Once Zayn is turned around, Harry closes the distance between him and Niall, enveloping the other boy in his arms. “I didn’t mean it, Niall,” he whispers. “Any of it. I thought he was going to take you with him, and I- I-“

“It’s fine, Harry.” Niall pushes him away gently, but his eyes don’t quite meet Harry’s and he’s scurrying after Zayn before Harry can do anything else about it.

 

lxiv.

“We’re not staying here,” Liam says when Zayn has cut their binds. “How many of them got out?”

“Two,” Harry answers.

“They could come back,” Zayn agrees grimly. “I heard two of them talking. They were here for supplies. There could be even more of them.” He drops down to a crouch by Liam and Louis, frowning. “You okay, Louis?”

“I’ve seen better days.” Louis runs a finger along his own wrist gingerly. “At least I’m not left-handed.”

“Niall, do you have any more bandages?” Liam shifts his attention from Louis to look at Niall inquisitively.

“I’ve got a little bit left, yeah.” They’ve used it mostly on Zayn’s leg, but Niall thinks there’s enough to cover that wound on his stomach.

Liam nods curtly. “You help Zayn with his cut. Harry, start packing whatever we have left. We’re going to find somewhere else.”

“We’re leaving _tonight_?” Harry sounds incredulous.

“Don’t argue with me, Harry.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, _Liam_ , Zayn’s got a bleeding gash, Lou’s hand is broken, and Niall almost just got fucking shot!”

“All the more reason to leave.”

“I was there when those two guys escaped, it’s _raining_ out there!”

“Harry!”

The room falls silent at Liam’s harsh tone.

The older boy sighs, running a hand through his cropped hair. “Harry. Just,” his voice softens, “trust me, okay?”

“You’re all okay with this?” Harry looks around at the others, and when none of them meet his eyes, he growls in frustration and crosses his arms.

“It’s different for you,” Liam mutters, and whether he’s talking to himself or the others, they’re not sure. “You were passed out. You didn’t see what they were doing, what they were _about_ to do.”

Louis rubs his back with his good hand. “We get it. Harry will calm down. He always does.” He glares at Harry. “Won’t you, Harry?”

Liam shakes his head and speaks before Harry can say anything. “I just- I want to keep you guys safe. You’re all I’ve got left, yeah?” He swallows, finally looking at the curly-haired boy.

A few seconds later, Harry sighs, crawling forward and sinking into Liam’s arms. “Hate when you use that look on me,” he mumbles into his neck, and Liam chuckles despite himself, wrapping one arm around him and another around Louis, mindful of his hand. Harry tugs Zayn down by the hem of his t-shirt, and Liam likes this, likes knowing that they’re all fine and still here.

When he notices an absence of blond hair, he looks up at the last boy standing a little off to the side. “That includes you now, Ni,” Liam says with a bit of a grin, beckoning him over.

 

lxv.

Niall fits between Louis and Zayn and it feels like he belongs there.

 

lxvi.

“What happened?” Niall asks quietly as he unrolls the bandages.

“They started knocking on the door and calling for help, and I thought…” Zayn trails off. “Well, we didn’t think any of that would happen.”

“Oh.” Niall cleans the wound carefully. Every so often, Zayn flinches in pain. “You… You don’t think it was your fault, do you?”

Zayn says, “It was. Louis tried to stop me, but I was the one who convinced him.”

“Anyone else would have done the same.”

Closing his eyes, Zayn focuses on Niall’s fingers to block out the memory. “It’s okay, Niall. I know when I’ve messed up.”

“No, you were being human.”

Zayn’s head is still swimming from that night’s events. He doesn’t want to argue. “Whatever you say,” he mutters, and leaves it at that.

 

lxvii.

Not an hour later, Harry has two bags packed, Zayn’s wound is bandaged, and Liam has torn up one of the blankets into small strips to cover Louis’s hand.

“The rain’s calmed down a little bit,” Harry says idly as zips and unzips the bag. One is full of dry foods; he packed the other with essentials, like candles and blankets and flashlights.

They’ve looked through the bodies for anything useful, but aside from guns, there wasn’t much to find.

“It’ll help us, I think,” Louis says as he examined his wrapped up hand, “cover up the sound of our footsteps and all that.”

Liam hopes so.

 

lxviii.

Liam and Harry each take a backpack over their shoulders, to Louis’s distaste (“I’ve got a broken hand, not a broken back, you wankers!”). “Niall, are you okay with watching our backs?” Liam asks, one hand on the door.

Harry looks about to protest, but Niall nods before he can say anything.

“All right. Just follow me and Harry.”

They couldn’t find Niall’s map anymore, and they assume it’s one of the things that the men took (along with Zayn’s crossbow and Louis’s rifle).

Liam pushes the door open.

“The last time I went out in the rain, I got separated from my group,” Niall finds himself admitting quietly to Zayn.

The dark-haired boy nudges his arm and says, “Then I’ll make sure you don’t get lost.”

 

lxix.

 _Maybe this was a mistake_ , Liam thinks as he and Harry find a locked door for the sixth time.

They’ve been outside for about ten minutes now, and while the rain does act as a good cover (the sound muffles their footsteps and the water probably makes their scent harder to detect), they are all soaked.

He moves on to the next building and stops when he hears barking inside. Judging from the front windows, it’s a pet store; Liam doesn’t know how the plague affected animals, and he doesn’t want to stick around and find out.

“Jesus, why are these all locked?” Harry curses, giving the pet store’s door a swift kick.

“Just keep trying,” Liam mutters, because they have no other choice.

 

lxx.

Finally, _finally_ , they happen across a movie theater at the end of a street and Harry is able to pry the doors open. They stumble inside, cold and wet and shivering.

There’s an infected man by the counter, though Niall is quick to take care of it with his machete.

“Waterlogged and badass,” Louis sighs and Niall yanks the blade out of flesh and bone. “You’re so sexy right now.”

It feels good to laugh at that.

“Thank god.” Harry drops the backpack to the floor, kicks a few popcorn kernels aside, and collapses on his back. Louis and Zayn clear their own spots and join him.

Liam slips off his own backpack, taking out a candle and some blankets. With Zayn’s help, they light it and set it in the center. Liam passes them all blankets. “This isn’t safe enough,” he says, eyeing the glass doors warily. “I wish we still had the map.”

“I wish we could have stayed there longer.” Louis sounds distantly wistful.

“We’ll find somewhere even better,” Zayn says.

“We’ll find a mansion that some guy abandoned,” Harry pitches in. His eyes are closed and he sounds like he’s imagining it. “There would be a huge gate that would keep all those things out. It would have a pool and- and a hot tub. A golf course, too.”

Niall takes off Harry’s jacket and lays it out on the floor to dry. He makes sure that his bitten arm is away from the other boys’ views. They seem to have forgotten about it lately, and the last thing he wants is to raise suspicion again. “I’d go golfing with you,” he says to Harry, because it can’t hurt to wish, right?

Harry opens his eyes and shoots him a curious glance. Niall offers him a small smile, and Harry grins back.

As the other three lapse into a conversation, Niall turns to Liam. “Where are we going next?”

“Your truck. The sooner we get to the safe zone, the better.”

“Okay, yeah.” Niall pulls his blanket tighter around himself, teeth chattering slightly. He’s never fared too well with the cold.

“As soon as the rain stops and we have some more sun, we’ll go.” Liam reaches over, rubs his back empathetically. “You okay?”

“Cold,” Niall mumbles, “but I’m fine.”

Liam’s hand trails up, and Niall feels him playing with the edges of his hair. “This isn’t your natural hair color, is it?” He remembers what the man had said. Even though he doubts that Niall was the same boy he was talking about, the prospect of hair dying did explain some things, like the darker roots of Niall’s hair.

“I dyed it a while back,” Niall confirms. “It’s been fading, and I guess the rain didn’t help…”

Liam tousles his hair, as if it will coax more of the dye out. “You’re fine either way,” he says, chuckling when he spots Niall’s face reddening.

“Thanks, Liam.” Niall ducks under the blanket. (He doesn’t just mean the compliment, but also for earlier, when Liam had drawn him into their little group hug.)

 

lxxi.

Liam sits against the counter, eyes trained on the glass doors. He doesn’t have trouble keeping his eyes open, watching as the rain slows and the sky lightens.

He thinks he’s going to start having a harder time falling asleep from now on.

Next to him, Niall lets out a soft snore and shifts, his head falling on Liam’s shoulder.

Liam turns to look at him, his eyes falling on the bite mark on the boy’s other arm.

Ignoring it, he wraps an arm around the kid and pulls him closer.


	7. lxxii. - lxxxi.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ahhh this came out later than i expected, my apologies! i got caught up in other prompts and roleplaying and school. uwu
> 
> also, we're nearing the end of the first arc of this story! i'm planning there to be four arcs in total, and if we use the current chapter count as an average number for each arc, then the story may be around 25-28 chapters in total? that's a really rough estimate so please don't hold me to that, haha.
> 
> laaaastly, thank you over and over again for all the kudos and comments you guys leave!! i know i rarely reply to comments but i do read every single one and appreciate them all. ;v;

 lxxii.

“So, how much did you hear of that conversation, back with those guys?”

It’s Zayn who sits down next to him and asks.

Niall had woken up with a crick in his neck, and Liam had left after claiming he needed to talk with Louis about something. Zayn had taken his place. Harry was still sprawled on the blankets, snoring softly.

“Um, more specifically?” Niall says even though he knows exactly what Zayn is talking about.

Zayn exhales. He tugs the backpack over and takes out a granola bar. He splits it and offers half to Niall, perhaps by way of getting him to talk. “Back at the supermarket,” he further clarifies. “When they thought you were passed out.”

“Ah, that.” Niall takes a bite of his piece and chews. He wonders how many hours it’s been – surely their clothes were dry by now. Without another word, he stands and walks over to the pile of blankets and various discarded clothing articles and Harry. He finds his jacket (or Harry’s jacket, technically) and wraps it around himself.

He doesn’t quite go back to Zayn.

“You heard them, didn’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“And were they just sprouting bullshit, or–?”

Niall busies himself by rooting through the other backpack. A few minutes pass in silence, and he starts to think that Zayn’s dropped the subject until the other boy speaks up again.

“So,” when he looks up, Zayn’s face is unreadable, “you’re not answering me, and I’m going to assume that you knew those guys.”

“No!” Niall blurts quickly.

Zayn raises an eyebrow.

“I mean,” Niall coughs, “I’m sorry, I’m not really fully awake yet.” He laughs in an attempt to diffuse the tense air, but it comes out as awkward instead.

“You didn’t know them?” Zayn presses on.

“No, I didn’t.” The words come out slowly, and Niall silently thanks Zayn for his patience. “Not personally, at least. I… I might have seen them around before.”

He spares a glance at Harry’s unmoving head of curls, expecting him to wake up any second. (The panicking part of him wishes he would.) Liam and Louis are still nowhere in sight.

“And what was before?”

Niall grips the backpack tighter. “I was with my brother. We ran into another group, and they took us in. Everything was good for a while, you know? They had supplies, they were good hunters, and they were going to take us to the safe zone. Then they saw my…” He gestures to his arm helplessly. “…bite, and.” He swallows. “They weren’t as understanding as you, and one night–“

His eyes sting with sudden tears and he lets out a shaky breath before he can help himself. He remembers their angry faces and Greg and the fire, oh god, the _fire_ —

The backpack slips out of his fingers and falls on Harry’s legs. Niall yanks himself back down to reality as the brunet jolts up, wide awake.

“What’s going on?” Harry groans, pushing his hair out of his eyes.

Niall rubs at his eyes quickly because the last thing he wants is more questions, but Harry turns before he can lower his arm.

“Niall?” A frown creases Harry’s features. He shoots a questioning and almost accusatory glance at Zayn, before reaching for Niall’s hand and tugging him down to the floor. “Hey, are you okay?”

“I’m fine, Harry,” Niall tries to say, but his throat feels too tight to get much of the words out. Harry’s pressing him into his chest before he can say much, anyway.

“What’d Zayn do?” Harry mumbles into his hair.

“Nothing.” Niall brings his hands up between them, meaning to push Harry away. He ends up just grabbing onto him weakly.

“Hasn’t anyone told you that mornings aren’t for crying?” Harry huffs. He’s rubbing his hand up and down Niall’s back, as if brushing away the remnants of the memory. “Or that crying doesn’t suit you, for that matter. Your face is all splotchy.”

Niall shoves him away, but not before a small laugh bubbles up his throat. He blinks his eyes clear in time to see Zayn stand up.

“I’m going to the bathroom,” he hears the dark-haired boy mutter, and there’s an unmistakable hint of irritation in his voice.

“Zayn.” Niall scrambles up after him.

At that moment, Liam and Louis emerge from the hallway of theaters, Liam smiling and Louis laughing at something that the other boy said. “Morning, Zayn!” Louis greets brightly, and Niall sees the way his expression falls when Zayn just brushes past them.

“He’s never good in the mornings,” Harry says by way of explanation, rubbing Niall’s shoulder comfortingly – and when did his arm get there?

“Quite the sunshine, isn’t he?” Louis sits down next to them, cradling his arm. “Morning, you two. You okay, Ni?”

Niall frowns. “Yeah?”

Louis looks at him quizzically. “Your face is all red.”

“I told him something,” Harry cuts in.

“Oh, really.”

“Yes, really.”

“What did you tell him that’s got him so red? Please stop corrupting people, Harold.”

“You don’t get to know, Lewis.” Harry emphasizes the mispronunciation and sticks out his tongue at Louis.

“That is abhorrent.” Louis shakes his head disapprovingly. “We are not an incestuous family. Stop hitting on your brother.”

Harry snorts, wrapping his other arm around Niall too. He ends up resembling an octopus clinging to the other boy. “Not as if you and Li aren’t already doing that,” he whispers into Niall’s shoulder, and it tickles a little. Niall laughs.

“What was that, Harold?”

“Nothing.” Harry gives the older boy a sweet smile.

Liam is packing and doesn’t look like he’s paying attention at all. When Louis shuffles over to him instead, Niall takes the opportunity to turn to Harry and whisper, “Thanks.”

“No problem, Blondie.” Harry’s green eyes flicker up. “Or maybe not anymore.”

Niall reaches up and runs a hand through his hair, vaguely remembering some comment Liam had made the previous night. “How bad is it?” he asks sheepishly.

“I didn’t say it was _bad_ ,” Harry admonishes, reaching up as well. Niall’s never noticed before, but he has really long fingers. “It’s different. I kinda like it.”

The compliment makes Niall’s heart do a funny little flip, which is strange because when Liam had basically said the same thing, he doesn’t recall getting _this_ embarrassed.

“Welcome back, Zayn!” Louis shouts, announcing the fifth boy’s return. Liam shushes him.

Niall untangles himself from Harry’s arms. He tries to say something to Zayn, but the other boy doesn’t even meet his eyes.

 

lxxiii.

Before the End of the World, Niall moved a lot with his family. They were never in one place for too long; he thinks that’s why he never really had any of those close childhood friends, or relationships.

An hour later when they’re moving down the street and Zayn hasn’t spared him a single glance, Niall still isn’t sure exactly what he’s done to deserve the cold shoulder and quite frankly, he’s sick of it. If this is what he was missing out on, those _what-if_ friendships and relationships that he’s always wondered about, then he’s kind of glad he missed them.

Zayn had wanted the truth, right? And that’s what Niall had done, even if he’d slipped that one little lie in there, so what brought on the sudden change of attitude.

He was the one who’d brought that memory back, the one that Niall had spent days and days have nightmares over, the one that Niall had been so sure that he’d suppressed – Zayn had made him _cry_.

Niall huffed. If anything, _he_ should be the upset one here! What was his problem?

“Niall, watch—“

He runs into someone’s back.

“—out,” Louis finishes a second too late.

Niall blinks.

“Everything okay?” Liam turns, looking at him in worry.

“Yeah, I was just distracted, sorry.” Niall sneaks a glance. Zayn isn’t looking at him. Of course.

“Stick close,” are Liam’s last words before they’re starting down the street again.

 

lxxiv.

The storm has left the streets eerily silent. Niall thinks he should be relieved by this, but it only makes him feel more nervous.

If the undead weren’t here, then where were they?

“Does anyone else feel really, really creeped out?” Harry breathes.

“It’s too quiet,” Niall says, and Louis nods in agreement.

The air smells like dew and freshly fallen rain. There are puddles around them, and the sides of the road are running with rainwater traveling down to sewage drains. Their footsteps are wet against the sidewalk.

“Seriously,” Louis says under his breath as they turn their sixth consecutive street without being attacked, “this is not normal.”

“It should rain more often, if this is what happens,” Zayn speaks up.

“Wait.”

Niall feels himself being tugged back. “Liam?” he asks, only to be shushed.

“Listen.” Liam looks around them, frowning. “Do you hear that?”

Niall holds his breath, and he does.

 

lxxv.

Someone is crying.

 

lxxvi.

Two alleys down, where they track the source of the noise to be: there’s a woman huddled next to the dumpster. Her brown hair is long and tangled, reaching the end of her back, and she’s wearing a faded, blue business suit. One of her heels is missing. There’s a certain scent permeating the air – a strong, sickly sweet aroma that definitely shouldn’t be coming from a dirty alley way.

“This is not normal,” Louis repeats.

The sobs stop, abruptly.

 _Shit_ , Niall thinks. There’s a sinking feeling in his stomach and he doesn’t like this, doesn’t like it at all.

The woman’s shoulders are still shaking even though she’s not crying anymore. Her head keeps jerking sporadically, like she’s twitching, and every so often Niall hears the unmistakable crack of bone.

She turns, revealing a set of bloody eyes.

“Niall,” someone’s whispering furiously, maybe Liam. They’re tugging at his elbow. “Niall, _come on._ ”

The woman straightens, her head still twitching erratically. She moves towards them, and Niall would say that she’s limping, except her movements are more precise, rigid, mechanic.

Her fingers are curled and twisted almost grotesquely; there are sharp, jagged things protruding from his knuckles, and Niall’s stomach goes queasy when he realizes that they look like gnarled fingernails.

The sweet smell is almost nauseating now. Liam’s tugging turns into a death grip on his upper arm, and Niall holds his breath as the woman leans in.

He had thought her eyes were bleeding, but the blood seems to be coming from the middle of her forehead. There’s a vertical gash there, and crimson trickles down the curve of her face, making it look she’s crying blood. She sniffs once, twice, and there is a breath-stopping moment when her dilated eyes bore into Niall’s.

Then she wails and staggers forward, _past_ him.

She stops at Liam and freezes. Slowly, she leans in just like she had done with Niall, but instead of drawing back and moving on, she emits a low growl from the back of her throat.

In his peripheral vision, Niall sees Harry raising his shotgun.

The movement doesn’t go unnoticed by the woman, either; her head snaps towards Louis with an audible crack. She twists her mouth open and _shrieks_ , the most inhuman and blood-curling sound that Niall has ever heard, and she lunges at Louis.

The shotgun catches her square into the chest, and Niall barely sidesteps in time to avoid her flying body.

She twitches on the ground, red spewing from her mouth. Then she sits back up, the front of her body completely drenched in blood but her eyes definitely alive.

“Jesus Christ,” Louis hisses. “Run, run, _run_ , you fuckers!”

Niall whirls around too fast and _slips_ and smears the front of his shirt with dirt and thank god Liam is there to haul him back to his feet. They run like the devil is on their heels, and the end of the street is a four-way intersection.

“Shit!” someone shouts, and Niall tries to stop but ends up skidding and landing hard on his back. A hand grabs him by the forearm and pulls him back up. “Thanks,” Niall gets out, and Zayn gives him a clipped nod.

Only then does he become aware of the barking, and when he turns, he sees three black dogs emerge from the street ahead. They’re baring their teeth and judging from the bloody sickness of their fur, they’re not normal dogs.

“We have to go around,” Niall says in between pants. “There’s the barber shop, the truck’s just a few streets–“

Another ear-piercing shriek interrupts him.

The woman is meters away from them when she stops, doubling over and clutching her head. Even the dogs seem to falter at the anguished moaning, and suddenly _her head splits open._

“Niall,” Liam says, his voice slowly rising in hysteria, “Niall, which way, _which way_ —“

Four thick tentacles slither from the gaping hole on the woman’s face, running from the top of her forehead and stopping just above her upper lip. The sweet smell is gone now, quickly becoming replaced by another acrid stench.

She screams and starts sprinting towards them, her arms outstretched like she wants to hug one of them, except those nails look like they would be incredibly painful.

The barking starts up again, Niall panics. “Left!” he barely remembers to tell the others before he’s turning and running down the street.

“Wait, Niall! Fuck!”

Niall looks back in time to see Harry firing at one of the dogs. “Come on!” someone shouts in his ear, and he realizes faintly that it’s Zayn who grabs him by the arm and practically drags him down the street.

“Zayn, stop, the others—“ He dares to glance back again and sees Liam and Harry and Louis running the opposite direction, the remaining two dogs right at their heels. He sees the woman stop at the intersection and look around wildly, loosing another scream before starting after them. In the distance, there are more gunshots.

“Watch it!” The end of the street is crowded with broken down cars, and Niall prays that none of them have working alarms as he jumps from car to car, heart pounding his ears.

There is a barricade at the end of the street.

“Fuck!” Zayn growls, slamming a fist against the wire fence. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

“Can we climb over?” Niall says desperately, but as he’s looking up, he already sees the barbed wire on top of the fence.

The woman emerges from the cars, unfazed even after everything. She hobbles towards them, blood dripping from her front.

Niall doesn’t think and throws his arms around Zayn, crushing the taller boy against his chest tightly. Zayn is quick to protest, trying to push him away, but Niall threads his fingers through his dark hair and grips it until he calms down. “Just stop,” he pants into Zayn’s neck, “trust me, just trust me.”

He tries to cover Zayn as much as possible and squeezes his eyes shut and drowns everything out except the feeling of Zayn’s thudding heart against him.

 

lxxvii.

He hears the woman sniffing at them and snarling every few seconds. Something wet is splattering onto his arm and he doesn’t have to open his eyes to know that it’s blood.

Something wet and slimy brushes his arm, and unconsciously, he holds Zayn tighter.

(In return, Zayn digs his fingers harder into his waist.)

The smell is absolutely sickening, and it takes every ounce of Niall’s willpower not to lean over and throw up on the asphalt. He starts a silent countdown from ten, and on four, he hears the clicking of a heel against the road. He opens an eye and sees that the woman’s back is to them now.

He disengages himself from Zayn slowly, motioning for the older boy to get behind him. Zayn is giving him an even look, like he’s saying, _You’re insane but I trust you._

The woman is nosing around the fence, and Niall slips his bag off, reaching inside and finding his machete easily.

He bites his lip hard, eyes stinging at the overwhelming scent as he edges closer to the unsuspecting woman. (He doesn’t know if he can call her an infected or a zombie when she doesn’t look like the rest of them – Niall has never seen anything like her before, and she looks more fitting to be called a _monster_.)

He grabs her by the shoulder and stabs his blade into the top of her spine. She jerks around wildly, her nails scratching the fence several times, and finally she goes limp.

 

lxxviii.

Niall doesn’t realize he’s crying until he lets go of the machete and touches his face to find his cheeks wet.

Then Zayn is holding him, and he can’t give a damn about whether the other boy was ignoring him or not; his trembling hands are searching for something to hold onto, and Zayn is there, accepting him. “It’s okay,” he’s murmuring to his hair, “I’ve got you, Niall, it’s over. It’s over.”

 

lxxix.

Zayn keeps him close as they walk. The silence between them is uncomfortable and Niall wants to say something, but his throat has run dry.

Zayn’s the one who says it: “They think you’re one of them,” and there’s no question who _they_ are.

He remembers the way the woman had zeroed in on Niall first, how ready he had been to yank her away when she attacked him, and then how shocked he’d felt when she moved past him.

“Can we please not talk about this now,” Niall pleads, his voice hoarse, and he’s clutching onto Zayn’s arm and he looks so _helpless_.

“Not now,” Zayn acquiesces quietly.

“Thank you,” Niall whispers, and Zayn only nods, leading him further down the block.

His leg feels like a hundred tiny needles digging into his skin at once, but for both of their sakes, he keeps his mouth clamped shut and walks on.

 

lxxx.

At the end of the street, they find the others. An edge of Liam’s shirt is torn, Harry doesn’t have his shotgun anymore, and all three of them are caked with dirt and blood and god knows what else.

“Are you two okay?” Liam studies the pair of them, the way Niall seems glued to Zayn’s side.

He meets the dark-haired boy’s eyes and receives a nod.

“This is the edge of town, isn’t it?” he asks Niall gently, because the boy looks like he’s been through hell and back.

“Yeah,” Niall rasps. “We’ll follow this road, and about half a mile out, I left the truck next to a billboard.”

“Okay. That sounds good.” Liam looks around their group, at each of their somber faces. When it appears that no one else is going to move, he takes the lead.

 

lxxxi.

The only thing he can think is, _That safe zone better be fucking worth it._


	8. lxxxii. - xcii.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I BASICALLY HAVE NO OTHER EXPLANATION FOR THIS TWO MONTH DELAY OTHER THAN I'M A BUTT AND I'VE HAD NO MOTIVATION FOR THIS STORY
> 
> but, like. my muse has returned now, somewhat, and i swear to god that i'm not just gonna let this sit and rot away, i swEAR.
> 
> thank you so much if you're still sticking with me. i can't assure that the next update is going to magically come within days, but i can promise that it won't take another two months.
> 
> with all that said, we might be halfway through the story now?? idk man. but it's definitely not over yet.

lxxxii.

It seems like hours later that they finally reach the truck. By then, Harry feels like he’s waded through a kiddie pool of rocks for ten miles. Judging by the others’ faces and the grim silence that had blanketed them since they got out of that last mess, he isn’t the only one.

“Finally,” he hears Louis say, and he sounds like he wants to snog the truck.

Harry would have too, if not for the splatters of grime and blood that paint the hood and sides.

“Yeah, sorry about the mess,” Niall says, coming up next to him.

Harry has been more hyperaware of him lately. Their arms brush as Niall shoves his hands into his pockets, staring listlessly at the truck.

Liam walks a full circle, stops next to them, and inquires, “Is that tire supposed to be flat?”

There is a simultaneous swivel of heads, four pairs of eyes training on the smallest boy. Niall groans and slumps comically against Zayn, who looks mildly surprised but steadies them both nonetheless. “I did that on purpose so no one would bother trying to steal it. The spare’s hidden under there, I just need to change that and we should be good.” He digs the keys out from his backpack and tosses it to Liam.

“Our little genius,” Louis coos with unmuted affection, reaching over to tousle Niall’s hair. “Help me out, Liam?”

“Your hand still isn’t healed.” Liam frowns.

“Just wants to see your arms at work,” Harry whistles under his breath, turning around casually and bumping Niall’s shoulder. There’s a smug, knowing grin on his features and when Niall sees, it makes the weight on his shoulders feel a little less heavy.

He’ll miss them, Niall decides. He’ll miss their faces and the friendly banter and the assurance that they’re all watching each other’s backs.

“They’re great arms,” Louis is saying unabashedly, and if Niall squints, he can see the faint beginnings of a blush in Liam’s cheeks. “I won’t strain myself, don’t worry. I’ll hand you tools.”

“Let’s leave the lovebirds at it,” Zayn chimes in, his own grin smug.

Just like that, the tension from the previous events is diffused – for the moment, that is.

“I’d say that I’m going to miss this kind of nomadic lifestyle,” Harry muses out loud as they sit against the pole of the billboard, shrugging his bag off his shoulders and unzipping it, “but that would make me a filthy liar.”

“You’re a filthy liar anyway.” Zayn sits down too and then Niall gets to fit snugly in between them.

On one side, there’s still a slight sense of hesitation from the amount of unspoken things between him and Zayn. On the other, butterflies are dancing restlessly in his stomach from having Harry pressed so close to his side.

It gives him this light-headed sensation. “I’m tired,” Niall declares with a little sigh, leaning back heavily against the pole.

Zayn pushes a water bottle into his hand, but Niall shakes his head and gives it right back. “I’m fine. I have my own.” He tugs his backpack over and unzips it, pulling out another bottle.

“Not afraid of some germs, are you, Nialler?” Harry teases. He gestures for Zayn and the other boy hands him the water bottle instead.

 _Well, I’m bitten,_ Niall thinks. _It’s not quite germs, but it’s pretty close._ Also, Harry had already kissed him that one time, so.

He doesn’t say this, of course; waving Harry off, he twists his bottle open and drinks from it. The water must be three days old by now and it’s warm from being in the confines of his bag, but nothing has tasted better.

“I hope they have hot showers,” Harry says wistfully. “That safe zone, I mean. And booze.”

Niall snorts. “ ‘Course you’d be worried about that.”

Harry shoots him an affronted look and says, “You’re not?”

“I’m very worried,” Zayn says. “Nothing like alcohol to wash down an impeding zombie apocalypse, right?”

“Not impeding,” Niall corrects. “Happening.”

“Semantics.”

“I miss high school,” Harry interrupts with a loud sigh. Niall turns to him, listening out of interest; he still didn’t know much of their pasts, after all. “Is that normal?”

“Remember when we played football, me, you, and Liam against Lou?” Zayn sounds amused now, propping his arms on his legs.

Harry laughs. “And Lou still beat us every time.” He turns to Niall, a half smile still on his mouth. “Do you play?”

“I played for my school during senior year,” Niall replies. Thinking back on it, he realizes he kind of misses high school, too. Sure, the work was boring and repetitive and people’s personalities were often less than desirable, but it sure beat the world’s current state.

He watches Louis and Liam working on the truck. They’re working side by side, Louis’s mouth moving and Liam smiling, and they look like they’ve known each other forever.

Actually, all four of them act like they’ve known each other forever. It makes Niall wonder – and maybe a little bit envious.

He continued, “I had to drop out, though. Got slide-tackled and messed up my knee pretty badly.”

“Football is a vicious sport,” Harry agrees, sympathetic. “To add to the list, I hope they also have a football field.”

Zayn groans. “I just want a bed. Somewhere comfy to sleep in.”

“A golf course.”

“Air conditioning.”

“And food.”

“Yeah. A proper baker would be nice.”

Harry leans over to shoot narrowed eyes at the darker-haired boy.  “Shut up. You liked my cupcakes, Malik. Who’s the filthy liar now?”

“Still you.”

“It wouldn’t ruin your badass image to be _nice_ to me.”

“I _am_ nice. Plenty nice. Just not to you.”

Harry reaches over and pretends to throttle Zayn and Niall laughs, simply shrinking back so as to not get caught in the tangle of hands.

“Ow!” Zayn whines when Harry lands a particularly nasty swipe. “Fucking cut your nails, mate!”

“I know, right?” Niall agrees.

“Oh, sorry,” Harry says loudly, not once relenting, “I couldn’t hear you over the sound of the _end of the world_ —“

Niall flicks at their hands until they back off of each other.

Cradling his ‘wounded’ arm, Zayn asks, “What about you, Niall?”

With a hum, Niall turns to him. “What about what?”

“What do you think they’ll have?”

He knows they have showers. He knows for a fact that they have booze. He knows that they don’t have an official football field, but there’s a sizeable field in the back that’s within the safe perimeter. He knows that they have plenty of beds, even if they weren’t the most comfortable.

But he couldn’t tell Zayn and Harry that, could he?

“I hope they have nice people,” he says decisively.

Zayn regards him for a few moments, and Niall stares back levelly.

A sharp whistle interrupts their conversation. “Our chariot awaits, boys!” Louis whoops, and on cue, there comes the sound of the car engine coming to life.

It is dulcet music to Niall’s ears.

Harry is the first to jump to his feet. “C’mon, Blondie,” he says, despite Niall’s not-blond hair. He grins and holds out a hand and Niall, after a heartbeat’s hesitation, takes it. “I’ll bet they have the nicest people.”

 

lxxxiii.

The relief doesn’t last long.

Niall volunteers himself to the back of the truck – he’d spent three days straight in that truck with his brother, and he doesn’t think he can spend another hour in it, much less six. He’ll eventually get his turn, anyway, when the four of them reach the safe zone and he goes back to being on his own again.

 

lxxxiv.

(Does he wish things were different? Yeah. But they’re not. So he tells himself to suck it up and keep it together for a few more hours and try to minimize the damage when the time does come.)

 

lxxxv.

“Well, of course me and Liam get to be in the truck,” Louis explains kindly, “because we did all the work while you lazy arses sat around and had a tickle fight.”

“Slap fight,” Harry amends for him.

“Whatever.” Louis shushes him. “As I was saying. I’m driving, since I’m the oldest—“

“Wait a minute,” Liam cuts in. Ignoring Louis’s pout, he turns to Niall and asks, “How old are you?”

Niall hums. “Turning twenty in a month.”

Louis laughs. “Nice try, Payne. I’m still the head bitch around here.”

(“Oh my god,” Zayn mutters, pinching at his nose.)

(“We’re letting a crippled man drive,” Harry deadpans.)

(“Jesus Christ, Harold, _shut up._ ”)

“As the youngest members of our troupe, Niall and Harry are exiled to the back. We’ll switch after two hours or so, and we’ll determine the next two unlucky sods then.”

“I say we do rock-paper-scissors to decide who has to be in the back,” Harry says obdurately. He turns to Niall and adds, “No offense.”

Niall scoffs, “None taken,” and hops into the back and settles in for a long drive.

Minutes later, Zayn joins him. “Harry beat me with a Bunnicula thing,” he says by way of explanation, and Niall barely stifles a snort.

“My wand still beats it, Harry,” Niall calls over his shoulder.

“In your dreams,” is the flippant response, followed by Harry ruffling his hair.

The three clamber into their seats, and then Liam slides the little open separating the front and the back open. “You okay back there?”

At Niall’s nod and Zayn’s thumbs up, he closes the window again. Niall takes out Harry’s jacket from his bag, pulls it on, and burrows himself into the corner of the truck.

Zayn sits across him, leaning back and stretching his legs out. “So,” he says, and Niall feels the dread in his stomach increase tenfold. “I think there’s a lot of stuff we have to talk about.”

There’s a brief jolt, and then the car starts moving. Niall slides his backpack under his head and opts to watch the moving sky. “I guess there is.”

“You’re leaving us, aren’t you?”

Niall’s fingers tighten on the sleeve of the jacket. He was expecting the question, but not so…soon. And the way it sounds coming from Zayn is blunt and…detached. As if he already knows the answer.

“I have to.” Niall keeps his gaze upwards.

“But why?” It’s less of a question and more of a demand. Zayn pulls his legs in and Niall can feel him staring.

“I just have to.”

“You have to or you want to?”

“I have no other choice, Zayn.“ He grits his teeth, wishing he’s anywhere else but here. “There’s something wrong with me,” he says, and he’s acutely aware of the other three in the truck.

The sky is a light pink fading into the beginnings of indigo, a sign that the sun is beginning to set.

“You’ve gone this long without anything happening.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean I’m _human_.”

“Niall.” There’s something in Zayn’s voice that forces Niall to tear his eyes away from the clouds and look at him. “I’ve seen you eat, I’ve seen you sleep, I’ve seen you cry. I’ve seen you laughing, smiling, and I’ve seen you terrified out of your mind. You’ve saved my– _our_ lives, more than once, and if you think that none of that’s convinced me that you’re fucking human, then maybe you’re more clueless than I thought.”

“Then yeah, I’m clueless,” Niall snaps, sitting up rigidly and meeting Zayn’s stare head-on. “I’m an idiot. But my brother died protecting me from those people who- who wanted to kill me, and I’m not about to do his death any justice by waltzing right back to them, you b- _bastard._ ”

His voice lilts horribly and his breath feels stuck in his throat. He wishes he had his inhaler.

 

lxxxvi.

No, he wishes the world wasn’t so fucked up. He wishes he still had a family. He wishes Zayn would say something out of line so it would be easier to hate him and tell him to fuck off.

But this is Zayn, which makes things a little more complicated than that.

“Your brother wanted you safe, and you wouldn’t be any safer out here by yourself.”

“And I’d be safer in that place?”

“If we’re with you, yeah.”

“You don’t know what they’re capable of. They’ll recognize me and they won’t let you in and if you think I’m going to let that happen, then you’re wrong.”

“And if you think I’m letting you die out here, then you’re wrong. I’d kill them if I had to.”

Niall swallows, shifting to his side and curling his legs in. “You can’t make me change my mind, Zayn,” he whispers, voice thick. “I never said I was going to stay with any of you. I don’t owe you anything.”

He regrets the words as soon as they leave his mouth.

“Yeah, that’s real fucking nice, Niall. I— You know what? Do whatever you want. I don’t care.”

 _I’m sorry,_ he wants to say. His mouth doesn’t form the words and silence falls over them, and he thinks it should bring him some peace.

It doesn’t.

 

lxxxvii.

He doesn’t realize how tired he is until he closes his eyes and sleep comes far too easily.

The feeling of the truck jolting to a stop is what yanks him back awake. Within seconds, his eyes are drooping back shut again, but the sound of voices keeps him from falling back into unconsciousness.

At first, they’re too faint to be understandable, and all Niall can tell is that they sound like they’re arguing. He keeps his breathing paced and listens.

Eventually, the whispering stops. Then he hears Liam ask: “Should we move him?”

Someone else replies, “He’s been through hell today. I don’t wanna risk waking him.”

“Are you gonna be okay out here?”

“We’ll be fine. You and Zayn get some sleep, okay?”

“We will. Do you… Do you think Zayn meant all those things?”

“…I don’t know, but I hope he didn’t. For our sakes and especially Harry’s, I hope he didn’t.”

“We’ll find out later, won’t we?”

“I guess.”

“Then I’ll talk to him. I can handle it, Louis.”

“Okay. Yeah, okay. Now get back in, I’m pretty sure Zayn’s getting impatient.”

“Just a few more hours, and then we’ll be good, yeah?”

“Just a few more hours.”

The truck wobbles as someone else climbs into the trunk, followed by the sound of the door being slammed shut. Again, there’s another nasty jolt as the truck starts moving.

“It’s okay if you want to keep pretending you’re asleep, but just hear me out, okay?” It’s unmistakably Liam.

Niall’s heart stutters.

“I don’t know about everything that you and Zayn talked about. He didn’t tell us. But he did say that you said you weren’t staying. That you don’t owe us anything. And you’re right, because you don’t. But we’re involved now too, you know? I care about you, and so does Louis. Zayn talks about you like he’d murder anyone who’d so much as look at you the wrong way. And Harry…well, Harry just likes you.

“If you think that this is the way things have to end like, then you’re wrong. There’s a second choice where no one has to leave. In the end, the decision’s still up to you and there’s nothing we can do to force you, but. I hope you pick the second one.”

There are tears sliding down his cheek. Niall lets out a shuddering breath, reaching up and digging the heel of his palm harshly into his eyes. “You don’t understand,” he says weakly, and he has an explanation drawn up in his mind but his tongue feels like lead and he can’t speak.

“Then make me understand,” Liam says, voice frustratingly _gentle_ and so different from Zayn’s and somehow, it makes this all the more harder.

Niall drags himself up to a sitting position. Liam is sitting there within arms’ reach, and that’s what Niall does: reaches out. Liam catches him by the forearms and tugs him over until he’s curled into his side and dampening the sleeve of his shirt with tears.

“I lied to you all, okay,” he hiccups. “Y-You saw the way that woman acted around me, I’m already one of _them_. The bite is real, Liam, it’s real, and I’m so sorry that I li—“

“Oh, Niall.” Liam’s hand comes up to the back of his head and presses him closer, and he gives a small, breathless laugh. “We knew it was real, Niall. We knew.”

 

lxxxviii.

How long does it take to know someone until you start caring for them so much?

 

lxxxix.

Niall doesn’t get any sleep after that. He watches the stars go by and is there when the sky starts turning lighter.

He gives the window a glance every now and then. It’s been closed this whole time, but he sees Louis and Harry and Zayn and wonders if they might have heard anything. More importantly, he sees Louis and Harry and Zayn and Liam and thinks of these four boys that he’s known for mere days, but wouldn’t want anybody else to spend the end of the world with.

He cares for them the same way he cared for his brother, and some of them, maybe more.

And if you care for someone, then you have to do whatever it takes to keep them safe, right?

 

xc.

“Rise and shine, Harry,” someone chirps into his ear, and Harry opens his eyes blearily to a world of light.

“What’s happening?” he slurs, raising a hand to shield against the obnoxious brightness.

“We’re here,” Louis answers. “Also, we’re two seconds away from leaving your ass if you don’t get up.”

That gets him moving. His legs ache in protest from being cooped up in such a tiny space for so long (he should have switched out with Zayn!), but he manages to more or less stumble out of the car. It isn’t quite daylight yet, but they’re well on their way; the top of the sun is just barely visible over the horizon.

Around them is a rather barren landscape. The road stretches onwards, but Harry isn’t looking that way; he’s looking at the fenced compound sitting some yards on the side.

“Holy shit,” he finds himself uttering. “We actually made it.”

Louis slings an arm around his shoulder. “You’re damn right we made it. Now let’s go, my limbs are pretty much ready to fall apart at this point.”

Harry laughs, and his whole body positively sings with relief at the thought of a hot shower, a proper bed, _food_ …

He takes one step forward, remembers one very crucial thing, and ducks out from Louis’s arm to turn around. “Hey, Niall—“

He was expecting the smaller boy to be right behind him. But no, Niall is still in the truck: specifically, in the driver’s seat, a hand on the door and looking ready to pull it shut.

“Niall?” Harry looks to the others in confusion, but both Liam and Louis look away uncertainly. Zayn has his arms crossed and isn’t even turned to them.

And nothing in this setting is right.

So Harry walks over to Niall to fix it. “Hey,” he says, smiling despite the nervousness that tinges his voice. “You forget something?”

Niall shakes his head mutely.

“Then what’re you waiting for, don’t you know that they could have a golf course in there.” Harry eases his hand off the door handle and twines them together instead. He gives a little tug. “C’mon.”

Niall finally looks at him, and Harry doesn’t like that he can’t read his eyes.

“He’s not coming with us,” Zayn says.

Harry looks over his shoulder, but the other boy still isn’t looking in their direction.

“He was never coming with us.”

“What?” Harry’s smile falters, and he turns back to Niall and pulls on his hand again. “This isn’t funny, Niall.”

“No, it’s not.” Niall slips his hand free. There’s a brief flash of hope where he looks like he’s about to move, but he only shrugs the jacket off. “Here.” He pushes it into Harry’s arms. “That’s yours.”

Harry stares at the rumpled piece of clothing. “No,” he says, and even his own voice sounds far away. “No,” he repeats, louder this time. The smile’s completely vanished, and he looks to the others, wondering _what is wrong with you why are you just standing there why aren’t you helping me_ but none of them return his gaze.

“You can keep it. You can give it back to me when it turns spring and it isn’t so cold.” He opens the jacket and drapes it over Niall’s shoulders, despite the other boy’s protests.

“Harry, stop.” Niall’s hand wraps around his wrist and pulls him away. “Zayn’s right, okay? I’m not coming.”

“So where are you going?” Harry persists.

“Away. I don’t know, I’ll find someplace.”

“Then I’m coming with you.”

“No, you’re not.”

“You can’t tell me what to do.”

“You can’t tell me what to do, either!” Niall shoves the jacket back at him. “I won’t be with you in the spring, okay? I won’t be with you at all. So please, just,” his voice wavers, “just let me go.”

There are a million things running through Harry’s head, and he wishes there was some way to say them all: _I’m not letting you go. I’m not leaving you alone. I want to be wherever you are, and I don’t care if I have to leave this safe zone for you. I care for you. I want to be with you._

There’s this urge in the back of his mind that’s been there for a while now, and Harry gives into it. He cups Niall’s cheek and tilts his head up and kisses him.

 

xci.

It’s nothing like their first kiss.

It doesn’t make him freeze up, and it doesn’t bring a flurry of shock. It makes him lean in further, and it brings a slew of butterflies that flutter restlessly in his stomach. It’s soft and gentle and tells him, _Please don’t go._

Which is why Niall jerks away, his cheeks tinted red and eyes flitting nervously between the other boys and Harry.

Harry, with his stupid green eyes and stupid hair and stupid dimples and stupid laugh, watches him with something like _adoration_ and Niall doesn’t think he’s felt any better, but he’s also terrified. This is the exact opposite of how he wanted things to go.

“I hope I’ll see you again,” he says quietly, shifting back and pulling his legs into the driver’s seat. “When all of this blows over, I mean.” He turns the key and underneath him, the truck comes to life. He’s still got half a tank of gas left.

He doesn’t look at Harry.

 

xcii.

Things happen in slow motion: the way Niall pulls away, the way he completely withdraws into the truck and takes away the pressure against his mouth all too soon.

Disappointment is an ugly feeling in the pit of his stomach. Harry forces a nod, and yeah, he understands. He understands completely.

He places the jacket back in Niall’s hands one last time. “You hold onto this, then,” he says softly. “Give it back when we next see each other.”

He steps back and shuts the door for him. Behind him, Louis is saying his name, but the only thing he’s aware of right now is the sight of this boy in the truck, still staring at the jacket in his lap and being so- _still._

For one foolish moment, Harry thinks that Niall will change his mind. He thinks he’ll take the keys out of the engine and step out and kiss him again and tell him, “I want to be with you, too.”

He doesn’t, of course, but that doesn’t stop Harry from hoping all the way to the last second where Louis has to take him by the arm and guide him away.

It’s a bit of a walk to the compound. He feels numb the whole way there.

“I don’t understand,” he mumbles.

None of the others can answer him.

He risks one last glance back. The truck is gone, and, with it, Niall.


	9. xciii. - ci.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my laptop crapped out on me, so that's why this took longer than i thought! but a lot of good plotsy stuff happens in this chapter and i hope you guys are excited becauSE I AM
> 
> on another note, we've officially hit 101 parts! thank you so much for sticking with me thus far <3

xciii.

About a mile away, there’s a gas station and, just like every other corner of the world, it’s surrounded by infected. Niall slams a foot down on the brakes and nearly careens into a decomposing woman.

Unsurprisingly, they all switch directions and start trudging towards him. He can’t hear them, but he sees their maws working and he’s sure that they’re making those ugly groans. He shuts the engine off, grabs his machete, and gets out of the truck.

The undead woman is right in front of him, exercising her mouth open and closed. Her eyes are fully dilated and looking straight at him, he can swear, but the problem is that’s all she does: just stare.

“Come on,” he tells her impatiently. “I’m right here.” He grips the machete tighter and even takes a step forward. His heart feels like it’s trying to crawl its way up his throat and there’s a sense of fear nagging at his mind, but he doesn’t dare back away. He needs this. “Do something.”

The woman snarls, baring her rotting teeth at him and maybe it’s wrong, the way a sense of hope spikes inside him. Niall takes a deep breath and almost gags at the putrid smell.

“What’s wrong with you?” he croaks, raising the machete between them and pressing the flat side of the blade against her chest. He nudges her. She snarls again, but makes no move in retaliation.

“I’m human too. I’m human, god dammit, so do something!” He drags a cut down her neck, watching as blood, dark red in color, spills over and stains her dirty blouse.

She keens lowly and turns away from him, her limbs swaying sluggishly with the movement. She starts moving back towards the others. It seems like they’ve all lost interest now, and Niall thinks that this is all so— wrong.

He grabs the undead by the scruff of her shirt and sinks his machete into her neck, driving the blade down and down until he feels it nudge the hard ridge of bone.

The woman drops like a heavy sack and Niall doesn’t have the strength to pull the blade free. He lets her sink to the ground.

“I’m sorry,” he mutters half-heartedly. He means it more than he sounds. He hates when he has to kill them, even if they might just be shells of the living they used to be. It doesn’t change the fact that that body, no matter how decomposed or rotten, has been surrounded, loved, and held by others. It doesn’t change the fact that they used to be people.

Suddenly, he feels dirty. He pulls off Harry’s jacket and sets it on the roof of the car, then raises a hand to dig the heel of his palm into his eyes.

He remembers what Zayn told him, and the guilt magnifies tenfold. He regrets leaving them all – but he feels the worst about Zayn and how their last conversation had gone nothing like he’d hoped.

Niall finally bends down and wrenches the machete free, grimacing when blood splatters onto his shoes.

“I’m human,” he says under his breath. He’s surrounded by zombies and the only thing he’s worried about is his humanity and that Harry won’t be too cold without his jacket. It’s kind of funny.

 

xcv.

The first thing they had done was hold them at gunpoint and shout demands like, “Don’t move, or we’ll shoot!”

“Well,” Louis whistled as they all raised their hands anyway. “Don’t you feel welcome, lads?”

It’s been about two hours since their arrival, and Harry isn’t feeling the overwhelming relief that he was looking forward to. He knows it’s because there’s an empty space next to him where Niall should be. He knows it’s because when one of the men asks, “How many of you are there?” and Louis answers, “Four,” it doesn’t feel right.

The second thing they do is usher them into some communal shower area, and then they have to scrub themselves raw to “ensure that they have no traces of the virus.” Their old clothes get thrown away, and they’re given new ones; once they’re changed, some guy in a white coat comes and pokes at their skin and tugs at their hair and pulls at their eyes and finally declares them healthy.

Some guy then takes over and shows them around. He introduces himself as Rick, and he sounds friendly enough, but he’s got a gun on his belt and a perpetual scowl on his face.

The compound is bigger than it looks. The first building is the smallest, with the most windows and all of them boarded. The first floor is for the sick, and then the other three are reserved for doctors’ living space and laboratories. They’re working on the cure, apparently. Progress has been slow, but it’s being made. Harry spies a crude little sign hanging by the entrance that reads _63_. He’s not sure what he means, but he thinks it’s the population count.

The second building looks like a warehouse, and Rick explains that it’s the main place for their supplies. It is connected to a fenced yard in the back. They’re growing their own food and, he says, they hope to also start bringing in livestock soon.

The third building is the tallest and therefore where everyone else stays. One of the higher windows is broken and the cement around it looks charred. “What happened there?” Harry asks, swallowing.

“We don’t know,” Rick answers smoothly. “It was there when we first found the place.” He gives no further explanation and starts leading them inside – Harry follows, but not before shooting Louis a glance.

Inside, the first things they see are the reds, blues, and yellows of a children’s playroom. They have to take off their shoes and exchange them for these strange white slippers and then they make their way past all the children’s toys.

“We keep telling them to make a separate room for the kids,” Rick’s saying. “But we’re struggling with space as it is.”

“Where are they?” Liam asks, nudging a stuffed turtle aside. “The kids?”

“They’re at dinner. Everyone is. Meals are served three times per day in the mess hall – that’s at the end of this corridor. Doors are always locked except for meal times so nothing unwanted gets into everyone’s food. There was also a problem with stealing a white back.” He doesn’t go towards the mess hall though, instead heading in the opposite direction. “They say they’re working on the elevators, but it’s been two months now. We just use the stairs. Rooms are up here, c’mon.”

Halfway up, the walls change from standard gray to actual wallpaper. It’s an ugly shade of yellow and inscribed with flowers and other sorts of motifs, and the ground is tile that looks like it used to be white, but is now just a sad, dull gray.

Both sides of the hall are lined with metal doors, each one labeled with a different number and letter combination.

They go up to the third floor, where Rick finally stops in front of a door with a faded _C13_ stamped across the top.

“This is one of the only rooms we’ve got left,” Rick tells them, knocking a fist against the door. “Dinner’s not over for another half hour, so come down to the mess hall afterwards, if you want. Everyone’s due inside here by eight, and light’s out is at ten. Try to stay quiet. Don’t do anything stupid.”

“Sir, yes sir,” Louis cracks.

On the other hand, Rick looks unimpressed and leaves them with one last reiteration of, “Don’t do anything stupid.”

“What a ray of sunshine,” Louis says when Rick is gone. He’s been full of witty comments in these past hours. He performs the honors of opening the door and letting them inside. “Ah, look. Three beds.”

The room isn’t too small, but it isn’t the largest, either. There’s a small window up high, but it’s barred. There are scratches on the wall. Harry wonders if this used to be a mental hospital or something.

A short wooden dresser stands against the back wall, and, true to Louis’s word, there is a single bed and a bunk bed.

“Reminds me of senior year,” Zayn snorts, kicking off his slippers by the door.

Senior year was a good year. Harry expects him to sound happy at the memory, but his tone is nothing short of bitter.

There seems to be a round of silent appraisal. “I guess we know who’s sharing,” Harry says in a lame attempt to diffuse the tension, and Liam and Louis’s head turn simultaneously to him.

“We do,” Louis agrees. “Wow, I can’t believe it’s been so long since we shared a bed, Harold.”

Harry shoots him a confused look, but Louis has that set expression on his face, the one that says, _I’ve made my mind up and there’s nothing you can do or argue to change it._

“You two should probably get some food in you,” Louis says, addressing Liam and Zayn. “We’ll be there soon.”

“But,” Liam starts.

“No buts.” Louis pauses. “Literally. Your ass has been looking a bit flat lately, Zayn. Get some meat in there.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Zayn pretends to flip him off and he’s not smiling at all, but they know him well enough to read the mirth in his eyes.

He tugs Liam out of the room, and when the door shuts behind them, Louis situates himself on the single bed and stares expectantly up at Harry.

Harry sighs. “What do you want?”

“I’m so glad that you are clearly excited to talk to me,” Louis says with a click of his tongue. “Please, try to contain yourself. It’s almost too much.”

“I’m not in the mood, Louis.” And he’s sitting on the bed that Harry had wanted to take, so he turns and crawls into the bottom bunk instead. The sheets are itchy.

A few seconds later, the bed creaks as Louis joins him, practically splaying himself over his back. “I know,” he says, muffled and breath tickling the back of Harry’s neck. “But you can’t just pout and keep it all in. Zayn does enough of that for us.”

“Don’t wanna talk,” Harry says into the sheets. “Get’off. Mff. Fatass.”

“Everyone’s after my ass, I swear.” Louis pinches his side threateningly. “But I’m serious. I know this is about Niall, and we need to talk about it.”

“No it’s not, and no we don’t.”

“You’re a shit liar. Get up.”

“I can’t.”

Louis kindly removes himself from his back and Harry takes the opportunity to move into a sitting position. He glares moodily at the other boy. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

“Yes, there is. You don’t know why he left, do you?”

“No. I don’t want to, either. Makes it easier to hate him.” Harry plucks at the stupid, itchy sheets and doesn’t look at Louis. He strongly dislikes him right now.

“Shut the fuck up and listen to me,” Louis says, unfazed. “He did it for our sakes, okay? He and his brother were here before, and when they found out he was bitten, they tried to kill him. His brother died trying to get them both out of here. He knew that if they saw he was with us, they wouldn’t let us in. There’s probably more to it, but that’s all Zayn told us.”

“You’re not making any sense. Zayn? What’s he got to do with this?” Harry wants to lie back down and stuff his face under the covers and just stay there for the next hundred years or so.

“Niall told him on the truck. That’s—“

“He knew since then? He knew and he told you, but he didn’t tell me?”

“He told me and Liam, but—hey, what are you doing?”

Harry gets up without preamble, not bothering to put on those stupid white slippers as he heads for the door. He ignores Louis’s calls of protest and leaves the room and he isn’t thinking of anything except the fact that Zayn _knew_ and had the chance to stop Niall but had let him leave—

 

xcvi.

He makes it to the mess hall relatively quickly for someone who’s spent less than an hour in the building. Liam and Zayn are standing in the hall and it looks like they’re in the middle of a conversation, but Harry doesn’t feel apologetic about grabbing Zayn and forcing him around. Liam sidesteps as Zayn stumbles back a few steps, caught off-guard.

“You knew,” Harry says unwaveringly, “that Niall was going to leave. And you told Liam and Louis but you didn’t care to tell me.”

The look of surprise on Zayn’s face slowly falls away into an expression of indifference. It’s a mask, Harry knows. He can read the tension in Zayn’s stance.

“You were asleep,” Zayn says flippantly.

“So you should have woken me up. Instead, what did you do? Tell Liam and Louis and then, what? Pretend that everything was gonna be okay? Just went right back to sleep?” Harry shoves him. “Real fuckin’ ace, Zayn.”

“You were asleep,” Zayn repeats, enunciating each word. He shoves Harry back instantly, irritation seeping into his voice now. “Of course we tried to convince him, but it was his own choice to leave. We tried and it didn’t work. You, on the other hand, what did you do again? How did sleeping through the whole thing help, exactly? Better yet, how did _kissing him_ work out for you?” He barks out a laugh and Harry snarls, grabbing him by the front of his shirt and slamming him against the wall.

“You act all high and mighty when you didn’t even know about things until the last minute,” Zayn continues, looking at him straight in the eye as he speaks. “You had to hear it from somebody else. Niall told me himself, _days_ ago.”

“But you couldn’t get him to stay.”

“Neither could you. And you’re pissed,” Zayn says, frighteningly calm, “that he trusted me enough to tell me, but never told you.”

“At least I properly said goodbye. You—You were acting like a dick!”

“Properly said goodbye? You mean giving him that rat’s ass of a jacket and kissing him? That it?” And Harry doesn’t even know how Zayn knows because the last time he recalls, he hadn’t even been looking – but his words send Harry’s thoughts into another frenzy. He feels Liam’s hand come down on his shoulder, and he shakes him off.

“You’re just jealous,” Harry hisses, hurt and angry and wanting nothing more but to hurt back, “that he liked me more than you.”

“Not enough to tell you what he told me.”

“But enough to kiss me back.”

Zayn’s eyes darken and he doesn’t say anything and—

_Oh._

Harry releases him abruptly, realization settling in his bones.

“Harry.” Louis is standing off to the side, glancing back and forth between them uncertainly.

“You,” Harry begins, eyes trained on Zayn, who simply adjusts his shirt with an air of equanimity.

“Is there a problem here?”

 

xcvii.

The new voice startles all of them.

Liam finally gets his limbs to obey and grips Harry by the shoulder, pulling him back. “Calm down,” he hisses to the younger boy, before addressing the newcomer. “Everything’s okay,” he says, and stops.

The man’s face looks eerily familiar.

There are brass knuckles dangling from his belt loops.

The stranger’s eyes rove over all four of them, eyes finally landing on Liam. “Good,” he says. “You the new group they brought in?”

And since no one else seems ready to speak, Liam does it for them. “Yeah. We were just about to go in.” He jerks a thumb over his shoulder, to the double doors.

The man gives a clipped nod. “Better hurry, then. They usually run out of the good food quicker.”

“We will.” Liam practically drags Harry away from Zayn, using his other hand to open the door. “Lou. Zayn. Come on.”

He leads them inside and tries to ignore the way the man watches them intently.

 

xcviii.

Several people shoot them curious glances, but for the most part, they seem used to newcomers. Dinner consists of macaroni and cheese that looks a little too pale and taste a little too bland. Yet, Liam doesn’t think he’d tasted anything better.

The mess hall lives up to its name: there are only ten long tables and each chair is filled up already, so a lot of people have resigned themselves to eating on the floor. Louis finds them a spot off to the side, and no one speaks while they eat their food.

Harry is the first to finish. Louis scrambles after him, and Liam watches helplessly as they pile their plates on the designated counter and stride out of the room.

He sighs, leaning against the wall. “He didn’t mean any of that stuff, you know,” he says. He lets his gaze wander around the full room, and it’s slightly overwhelming, the amount of _living_ people he’s surrounded with. He sees several children, which gives him a strange sort of elation. He’s just glad they’re okay.

“I know,” Zayn returns, biting at the edge of his fork. “Didn’t make him sound any less of an ass.”

Liam isn’t sure about exactly what’s going on between them. Actually, he does have some vague idea – but he would rather keep out of the whole issue. “He’ll come around,” he says, for a lack of anything else to tell him. “He always does.”

Zayn scoffs. “Let’s hope so.”

They return their plates, and then Liam has to lead them back to their room because Zayn’s apparently forgotten. On the way, they pass by someone who reminds them that lights out is in fifteen minutes.

Inside, Louis and Harry are together on the bottom bunk. Liam honestly can’t tell where one of them ends and the other begins and the sight elicits a very small feeling of jealousy, but he brushes it off. He doesn’t need to add to whatever’s already going on.

Zayn’s lying down on the single bed, so Liam takes off his shoes, flicks the light switch off, and climbs on the top bunk.

The sheets aren’t the most comfortable things in the world. But he’s got four walls and a roof and there are no flesh-eating monsters to worry about, and that’s enough.

 

ic.

Louis joins him not too long after.

“Thought you were sleeping with Harry,” Liam asks softly, pulling the blanket aside and letting him in.

“He kicks,” Louis is kind enough to explain.

“Is he okay?”

“Mostly.”

It’s a tight fit, with Louis’s elbow digging into his side and his own knee is laying at an awkward angle, but Liam just pulls the other boy closer and doesn’t have to try very hard to fall asleep.

 

c.

In the morning, Louis is the first to be called away.

A man brings them each a new set of clothes. “You’ve been assigned to supplies duty,” he tells Louis. “You’re coming with me.” He doesn’t bother to speak to the rest of them, and even Louis looks worried as he follows him. On his way out, Liam catches his arm and gives it an assuring squeeze.

A woman comes for Zayn next. She doesn’t even offer an explanation, just asks, “Malik?” and, at Zayn’s nod, gestures for him to follow.

“Somehow, I imagined this place would be more…cheery,” Harry remarks when it’s just him and Liam. He’s sitting on the edge of his bed, looking listless. His curls have been pushed back messily. “Not exactly confetti and rainbows, but at least a few more smiles, you know?”

“They look like good people, at least.” Liam shrugs.

“Think Louis got stuck on laundry duty?”

Liam snickers at that. “If he did, we’d never hear the end of it.”

“You’ll never believe the amount of stained sheets I washed today,” Harry mocks in a frighteningly accurate version of Louis’s accent. “We are surrounded by heathens!”

By the time someone comes for them, they’re both in a fit of laughter. The woman, who later introduces herself as Stephanie, waits patiently until they recollect themselves.

“We’re understaffed in the infirmary today,” she explains when they’re on their way. She sounds amused and is the friendliest person they’ve seen here so far. “The winter season’s coming, and since we can’t exactly give out flu shots, we’ve been getting a lot more cases of the flu.”

She leads them out of the building, and Liam guesses by the lightening sky that it’s around seven or eight in the morning. In front of the infirmary, there’s a short line of people waiting.

Stephanie unlocks the front doors and leads them inside. “Wait here, please. Someone will be with you shortly,” she tells the people, only to receive various groans of impatience. She heads towards the back.

“We aren’t helping them?” Harry asks, confused.

“We can’t. We’re needed in the second floor today.” She opens the door and, lo and behold, there are more stairs. Harry bites back a sigh and starts up, Liam not too far behind.

“What’s on the second floor?”

“The lab. We’re running out of medicine, and our few pharmacologists have been working to recreate some remedies. There was a little accident last night, so we’re supposed to clean that up first. We should finish in time for breakfast, and after that, I’m supposed to send you to the supply warehouse. We’re sending out a scavenging team.”

Liam nods along, even if only half of her words filter properly in his mind. They arrive on the second floor, and the first door is heavily chained and barricaded.

“Don’t ask,” Stephanie says, seemingly reading their minds, and Liam and Harry look at each other before deciding to stay silent.

“Through here, boys.” She unlocks a door for them, and the first part of the room looks like a walk in closet. She grabs some lab coats hanging from the shelf and tosses one to each of them, followed by gloves and goggles. “This isn’t the lab with the dangerous chemicals,” she explains, “but these are just for precaution. Don’t want you ingesting something you shouldn’t be.”

With that comforting thought, she takes them further into the lab. It reminds Liam of his ninth grade chemistry classroom, except there are containers filled with things definitely more dangerous than sodium chloride.

One of the tables looks particularly messy, with vials strewn everywhere, broken glass littered on the floor, and stains on the black surface. “Just grab the vials and take them to the sink,” Stephanie instructs, and they both set on doing it.

“You probably get this question a lot, but are you working on a cure here?” Liam asks casually. He adjusts his goggles before picking two vials from the ground.

“I do get that a lot.” Stephanie cracks a slight smile. “That’s okay. I know we’re all hopeful. Yes, yes we are. Don’t ask me how far we’ve gotten, because they don’t tell us.”

Harry looks up from the floor, eyebrows furrowing slightly. “Well, how do you know they aren’t lying?”

“Every now and then, they tell us they’re making progress. You should see everyone’s faces then – you’d think that Christmas came early or something.” Stephanie shakes her head. “They wouldn’t be cruel enough to get people’s hopes up like that.”

She runs the tap and starts rinsing the vials. “There’s a broom and dustpan in the back. You can start with the broken glass, just make sure you don’t hurt yourself.”

Harry steps out of Liam’s way as the other boy goes to retrieve the things. “Do you think someone can be immune to the virus?” he wonders out loud. Behind him, Liam drops the dustpan in surprise.

Stephanie shoots him a glance over her shoulder. “Immune?”

“Yeah, like.” Harry pauses, tapping a finger thoughtfully against the table. “Say, they’re bitten and they don’t turn. Do you think that’s possible?”

This time, Stephanie laughs. “You haven’t run into any of those, have you?” she asks, sounding far too amused for Harry’s liking. Suddenly, she doesn’t seem so friendly.

“I guess not,” Harry says. Liam’s nudging him in the side, but he ignores him as Stephanie continues talking.

“That door down the hall? The one I told you not to ask about? Two months ago, we accepted a mother and her daughter. The poor thing was only eight and she had a huge bite right here.” She touches her own forearm. “We kept her in a separate room to be safe, but she was perfectly normal – she looked perfectly healthy, talked, played with the other kids, didn’t try to eat anyone. Shit, her bite even started to look like it was healing.

“Then she started getting sick. It was the little things at first – coughing, a few fevers. I guess we were so hopeful that she could be the answer to everything, you know? God, we were so amazed.

“But her condition only got worse and worse, and eventually, she died. Her mother had been in the middle of visiting her when she just…stopped breathing. We sent out doctors in there to find out what the hell happened, but they couldn’t find anything. She died, and she stayed dead. Never came back as one of those zombies. We were all glad for that.

“So her mother agrees to let the doctor’s open her up, right, to try and find out how she died, or at least what made her immune to the virus in the first place. They dissected her in that room, the one that’s boarded up. You couldn’t see a single thing out of place on her body, but Christ, when they cut her open—“

Stephanie breaks off with a sigh, setting the vials down momentarily. She stares straight ahead and continues, her voice holding the slightest hint of a tremor.

“Her insides were infested. She had tumors in her stomach, in her brain, and no one had ever seen anything like it. Said it was like her body had started rotting from the inside out. She hadn’t been immune, she just had a late reaction, if you will. The same night we found out, her mother died. Same symptoms. Didn’t come back to life, either.

“Then the doctors started dying too. After the fourth one, we realized that they had all been near that girl when she died, and we figured that when her body failed, she released some sort of airborne toxin that infected the others. We burned the bodies. Everyone had to wear face masks up until two weeks ago. We boarded up that room, and the girl’s body is still—“ Stephanie stops abruptly. “Not everyone knows what happened. Actually, I’m not even supposed to tell the story, but. There. You got your answer, kid. Now don’t go around repeating it to everyone.”

“Oh,” Harry says, voice small.

“We call them walking grenades. When they go off, they’ll take anyone nearby down with ‘em. So if you run into one and they try to give you some bullshit about their blood being the cure, run for the hills.” Stephanie turns the sink off and sets the vials aside to dry. “We’re done here. There’s another lab station left, and then we can head to breakfast.” She smiles brightly, oblivious.

But Harry isn’t looking forward to breakfast anymore, because to be honest, he’d rather throw up than eat anything right now. He thinks of Niall. He thinks of his smile and his laugh and all that time they’d spent with him. They had been near some— some “walking grenade?”

Stephanie’s already moving to the door. Liam has to pull Harry away.

“I told you not to,” he reprimands, but he sounds unsettled, too. Shaky.

There’s an awful, awful feeling growing in the pit of Harry’s stomach.

 

ci.

When Niall had awoken, there was an undead woman standing next to him. His first instinct was to kill her, but she had been far more interested in the wall than him. So he sneaked out of the storeroom and shut the door behind him.

He finds a travel brochure by the front and spreads it over the counter. He doesn’t have his old map any more, and this will have to suffice. He fishes his old Sharpie from his bag and starts marking potential destinations.

He eats whatever he can find and does it while staring at the wall; he doesn’t think he can stomach anything if he’s looking at those zombies.

After wards, he cleans off his machete and sets to work on resupplying. He unzips his bag and starts unceremoniously pushing whatever he can inside.

He hadn’t meant to stay for so long, but the fatigue of the past few weeks had finally caught up to him – if he counted correctly, he’d slept a grand total of fifteen hours. That was a new high even for him, but the most disconcerting part was that when he woke, he wanted to roll back over and keep on sleeping.

He knows he probably can, if he wanted. He could just curl up here on the floor, and if the place became swarmed with undead, he would still be okay. (He thinks he should feel… _glad_ for that, but no, it’s anything but a pleasant thought.)

Niall zips up his bag and stops to cover his mouth and cough. He reminds himself to check for medicine. The cold season has never been too easy on his immune system and if he wants to meet Harry in the spring, he’ll have to get through winter.

“Spring,” he muses under his breath.

That had been wishful thinking, but now it sounds like something to look forward to.

He walks out of the gas station and heads for the truck, bag slung over his shoulder and map tucked into his pocket.

It’s justanother day.


	10. cii. - cvi.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm really, really sorry that this took so fricking long, but there was just a lot of laziness and procrastination and the holidays certainly didn't help. but my new year's resolution is to be a little more consistent with updates, and i really hope i can follow through with that. @_@
> 
> i hope you all had happy holidays and that your new years are starting off well! shoutout to Ayan bc the wait motivated me to actually write this, and another shoutout to my beloved computer mouse for running out of battery and basically forcing me to stay off tumblr.

 

cii.

Niall thinks he must have made it a good thirty miles away from the station before the gas meter reads close to empty, and he’s forced to pull over before the car completely dies. It’s not anything he panics over; this is not the first time and he knows it won’t be the last. He goes through a mental checklist: take out one of the tires, make sure all of his belongings are in the bag, and…well, he doesn’t bother with a cover. He thinks that the blood on the hood and the empty reading for gas would be convincing enough.

And if not? He’s been overdue for a change, anyway; he could only go so long using a car that reminded him of his brother. Besides, cities are the best places to find new cars and according to the green sign, the next one is just a mile away.

Niall moves to put on the jacket, only to stop. For the first time in a while, he glances down at the bite mark for the first time in a while. It’s starting to look better—not much, but definitely better than the bleeding gash it used to be. The wound has begun to scab over and the bruises are fading and he thinks this is a good thing.

He thinks, subsequently, that he should regret leaving the group.

But he doesn’t. It’s almost ridiculous. He used to have friends he’d known for years, yet he never trusted them with his food – now here were there four boys whom he knew for a few weeks, and he forewent safety in numbers to keep them safe.

Life’s funny, he thinks.

He keeps walking.

 

ciii.

An hour in, Niall starts to think that his life is actually one giant Lord of the Rings movie because he definitely remembers the sign saying one mile, not the distance from the Shire to Mordor.

The city’s entrance is blocked by a mishmash of cars and trucks. His legs are throbbing by then – maybe he should have been a little more involved in sports – but he hauls himself up the first car’s hood and starts the precarious trek across. He’s made it this far, damn it, he’s not going to be stopped by a poorly built Jenga tower.

He’s halfway across a truck on its side when the first hand grabs him. Wet, clammy fingers close around his ankles and tug, and then he’s slipping, foot crashing through the window and glass slicing mercilessly over skin.

Niall catches himself on the window frame, and he can’t see whatever is grabbing him, but it’s growling and trying to devour his limb. Between his position and the searing pain in his leg, the last thing he wants is to move around wildly. But he also doesn’t want to become this zombie’s next meal.

Finally, he lands a solid kick with his good foot, and the fingers around his ankle disappear. With a grunt, he catches a foothold on the dashboard and tries to pull himself up.

As if his luck can’t get any worse, someone shoots at him.

The bullet embeds itself in the car just two feet away from him and he startles, nearly losing his hold.

Another gunshot—this time, it literally whizzes past his head and he does drop into the truck. The remaining shards of glass on the window say hello to his arm on his way down, tearing through fabric and leaving sliver of red as a parting gift. He lands on a foul-smelling, squirming, snarling woman, and she nearly bites off his fingers if he hadn’t moved fast enough.

Of course, his bag didn’t drop down with him. _Fuck whatever they say about Irish luck,_ he thinks, grimacing, and he grabs the broken off gear shift. Momentarily losing himself, he drives it into the undead woman’s face.

He doesn’t watch it break through rotting flesh; he can tell by the way she goes limp that the makeshift weapon has done its job. He’s breathing heavily through his mouth – he thinks he’ll gag if he inhales the ratchet smell – and trying to peer out of the windshield. There’s a car toppled in front of the truck though, and he can’t see whoever was shooting at him. _Maybe he’ll think I’m dead,_ Niall thinks, wistful.

He tries to move his leg and groans when pain screams up the limb. “All right then,” he says, breathless, and turns to his arm instead. The sleeve of the jacket is ripped and slowly dampening with blood. Niall peels aside the torn fabric and freezes.

The cut doesn’t feel that deep, not as deep as the one in his ankle – but the blood trickling out is a dark crimson, unusual for a minor cut. He closes the rip again and presses his hand down, resolutely ignoring the pain.

He forgets about the shooter. He forgets about the corpse under him. He focuses on not bleeding to death, because he’s Niall Horan, the Boy Who Lived (from A Zombie Bite, not to be confused with that scarred lad). He thinks about years from now, when a cure has been developed and they find his dead body in a truck. Embarrassing. That’s not going to happen, not on his watch.

Before he can dwell any further on that, a shadow casts over him. Before he can even look up, he hears a gun cocking.

“Holy hell,” exclaims a voice. For a second, Niall thinks it sounds like Louis.

A second, female voice pitches in, “Did I get him?”

“Missed by an inch. The glass got him good, though.”

Trucks apparently become ten times smaller when they’re sideways, because Niall has a hard time craning his head to see who the stranger is. He can’t distinguish anything except a pair of glasses and a hand suddenly being extended towards him. “Sorry about that,” the stranger’s saying. “Linny thought you were one of them.”

There are a series of thumps, like someone else has stepped on the truck. “You thought he was one too,” says the female voice again.

“You waiting for a written invitation?” says the guy again, and Niall stares at him as best as he can.

“You shot at me,” he says. He wonders if it’s odd to be worrying about that in these odd circumstances. “How do I know you don’t just want to loot me?”

The boy disappears for a few seconds, then returns with something in his hand. “You mean this fancy looking Ariel bag you’ve got?” he asks, and Ariel’s graffitied face smiles mockingly down at Niall.

“You’re either coming with us or you’re not,” says the second voice. “The walkers aren’t waiting to find out, and neither will we.”

The hand reappears and this time Niall reaches up with his good arm. He straightens about halfway before his ankle aches in protect, sending his knees buckling.

“You okay?” A second hand settles on his shoulder, and Niall blinks. Now that his head’s out of the truck, he has a worm’s eye view of the two: the boy has shorn black hair and a pair of thin-framed glasses. He’s wearing a _Depeche Mode_ shirt that looks like it’s seen better days, but Niall reckons he shouldn’t be on to talk. The girl is darker skinned, her dark brown hair pulled back. They look younger than him, but the girl – Linny – has a semiautomatic rifle cradled in her other arm.

“My ankle’s bleeding,” Niall says, glancing down with a wince.

“So’s your arm. Is that okay?”

Niall nods. He glances around, noticing that there is a noticeable absent of undead. “It’s fine,” he says. “Where are they?” He’ll have to admit, it’s just as worrying as it is relieving.

“Don’t worry, Aaron distracted ‘em over there.”

“I like to call it a bile bomb,” Aaron says proudly. “Mixture of puke, zombie guts, and blood.”

“Help me pull him up before I throw one on _you_.”

It’s a team effort. A “thanks,” leaves his mouth when he’s finally sitting on the truck, legs freed. He pulls his right ankle up, and it’s a smear of blood and something brown and murky. A jagged piece of glass juts out grotesquely.

“I’ve got bandages,” Aaron declares, and before Niall can suggest that maybe they move somewhere…safer, the shorter boy is already slipping his backpack off and rummaging inside.

“You like our trap?” Linny readjusts her gun, grinning crookedly down at him. She’s wearing a flower-print shirt and cargo pants, but she manages to look threatening.

“You mean…this?” Niall gestures to the wreckage around them.

She hums in reply. “Nate said it wouldn’t work,” she says, like she’s confiding a secret. She kneels down just as Aaron is starting to attend to his ankle, and Niall feels a little bit trapped. “But guess what happened to that sod?”

He matches her gaze. “What?”

“He’s dead!” she says at the same time Aaron unceremoniously pulls the glass out. Niall’s eyes screw shut and he cusses out every living creature in English and then some Spanish. Aaron apologizes. Linny dissolves into cackles.

“Think your bomb’s starting to wear off,” she says once she’s calmed down, looking off somewhere that Niall can’t see.

Aaron is wrapping the bandages slowly around his ankle, eyebrows furrowed in concentration. “There’s two more in my bag,” he says to Linny, sounding distracted. To Niall, he says, “I don’t have that antibacterial stuff with me, but this should stop the bleeding until we get back to camp.”

Niall pauses. Beside him, Linny has retrieved a small glass bottle from her friend’s (or brother, maybe?) bag. It’s dark green with chunks of… _things_ floating around, and Niall feels a little sick just looking at it. Now he understands why they call it a bile bomb.

As if sight isn’t enough, Linny unscrews the bottle and abruptly shoves it under his nose. Niall panics and shoves it away, but she’s dancing out of his reach before he can. His eyes water at the putrid smell and he chants silently, _Don’t throw up, don’t throw up, don’t throw up_.

With a loud whoop, Linny tosses it, and the bottle goes arcing over the wreckage. Niall hears it shatter, followed by faint groans.

“She does that sometimes,” Aaron explains belatedly. “Sorry.”

Niall shakes his head, using his good hand to wipe his eyes clear. “Camp?” He manages to look away from Linny and the manic expression on her petite features.

“Yeah, it’s not far from here.” Aaron dusts his hands off, getting back to his feet. The truck creaks beneath them, and Niall is reminded that they are still in the middle of the street. “You’ve probably caught on already, but I’m Aaron. That’s Linet, and everyone calls her Linny.” Aaron smiles at him, this wide, sugary smile that comes off more unnerving than friendly. “And you’re—?”

Niall manages to get to his feet. His ankle is throbbing with pain and he can feel blood trickling out from the bandages, but it’s better than having an open wound. He wants to thank these two; however, the words get stuck on his tongue and all he can manage is a small murmur of his name.

“Niall,” Linny repeats after him. “All right, Mr. Niall, we should probably head back to camp. We’re burning daylight out here.”

Niall stares. Between their smiles and the last bile bomb and the gun, he’s not sure if it’s smart to decline. “Yeah,” he relents finally. Maybe he’s just being paranoid. Maybe he just hasn’t met normal, friendly human beings in a while. Yeah. “Sure. Could you, uh.” His cheeks flush. “Help me get down?”

Aaron supports his right side while Linny takes point. She has clipped the last bomb to her belt loop, and Niall can’t help but stare at the disgusting mixture.

Aaron catches him staring. “I’ll have to find more ingredients,” he mutters off-handedly, helping Niall take the last step off the car.

Now that they’re all on level ground, Niall realizes just how young they look. Aaron is the shortest, while Linny stands about three inches shorter. He wonders how old they are. “What are the ingredients?” he asks in an attempt to make conversation. They’re walking down the street (well, Niall limps) and it’s empty; Niall assumes that most of the undead have lumbered off to follow the scent of the bile.

Aaron gives him a serious look. “Leave the crafting to me,” he says, and then nothing more.

 _Moody_ , Niall thinks, but these people also technically saved them, so he keeps his mouth shut. For now.

 

civ.

“Camp” turns out to be a park in the center of the city.

It doesn’t even look like a park at first; it looks more like a prison yard. Barbed wire fences run around the perimeter as far as he can see, and they’ve erected giant spikes against boards. It looks effective; several have zombies skewered right down the middle.

“Open the gates!” Linny hollers as they approach. When nothing happens for six seconds (she counts out loud), she grunts in annoyance and fires her rifle once, twice.

Niall flinches away from her. In the distance, he hears indignant squawks and then the flutter of wings as birds scatter.

Movement catches his eye, and he sees two— _children_ on the other side of the wire, pulling at a rope together. The black slab of a gate groans, opening slowly but surely.

“By the way, I’m sorry for shooting at you,” Linny says, lowering her gun. She doesn’t seem concerned that several zombies are beginning to emerge from the streets, attracted by the gunshots. In fact, she doesn’t even sound apologetic. “C’mon, now.” She ushers them towards the gates, which have now opened wide enough that they can slip through.

Aaron pats Niall’s wrist and helps him in. “Home sweet home,” he chirps.

 

cv.

Niall is vaguely aware of the gate shutting behind him. They make it about three yards in before his legs stop working completely, because—

Zayn’s there.

No—They’re _all_ there.

“Zayn,” he breathes. He can’t tell if he’s confused or horrified or glad. “Harry?”

Linny glances over to him, seemingly amused. “Sure,” she says. “Keep walkin’, Blondie.”

After some urging from Aaron, Niall finally starts forward again.

It’s all confusing: there are others coming out, most looking about his age and others even younger. But Zayn and Harry and Liam and Louis stand out in the crowd, each one grinning at him.

Niall thinks he finds himself grinning back.

 

cvi.

“How’s laundry duty going?” Liam asks casually upon Louis’s entrance.

“How’s baking with Martha Stewart?” Louis snipes back.

“That’s _after_ we clean out labs with dangerous chemicals.”

Harry listens to the banter. Their room is rather small, and their voices bounce off the walls easily. He wonders if anyone occupies the rooms next to theirs, and if they can be heard.

“Where’s Zayn?” Louis finally says.

Everything falls silent, and Harry feels both of their eyes on him. “Thought he’s been stuck on supplies duty?” he offers.

It’s been nine days since they separated from Niall, if his tally marks on the wall are accurate. Nine days since they’ve been assigned to different jobs. Harry sees Liam nearly every day, but he can’t say the same for Louis, and especially Zayn. They might not have been on the best terms, but Zayn’s been his friend for years and yeah, of course he’s going to worry.

“He’s always at the mess hall early.” Liam still sounds like he’s choosing his words carefully. “I think we should meet him there.”

Harry shrugs like it’s no big deal. It really isn’t. Sure, he still feels lingering traces of jealousy and anger, but he refuses to let their friendship crumble over…this. Over Niall.

“I’m starving,” agrees Louis, and that’s the deciding word.

Harry follows them out of their room.

He wonders how Niall’s faring.


End file.
